


Reversal

by Reily96



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords
Genre: Arguing, F/M, Happy Ending, Hate to Love, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Mild Language, Minor Violence, Romantic Comedy, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-17 09:38:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 38,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9316964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reily96/pseuds/Reily96
Summary: It's your average story: Evil mage kidnaps princess and takes her to castle, heroes go to save princess, evil dragon kidnaps princess from evil mage - wait a second, that's not right! In a strange twist of fate, it seems Vaati has to save Zelda before his battle with the Links. The short adventure that ensues just goes to show that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. But sometimes, that isn't necessarily a bad thing.





	1. Act 1

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to Reversal! If this seems familiar, it's likely because it is! This is the same exact story from FFN, as I am the same exact author. So no worries, I gave myself permission to post this on here. :p 
> 
> This was meant to be a silly, short little story, but I did my best to keep characters within their own characters (tho I do think I wrote Vaati a liiiiittle too mildly in this story but whatves). Please enjoy, Reversal!

Gibdo was the eldest of three siblings. He had a younger brother, Poe, and a younger sister, Ghini.

… His parents had a rather morbid sense of naming.

But despite the odd names he and his brother and sister had grown up with, they had led relatively normal lives. Which was dreadfully boring. Ghini had been lucky. At age 15, a knight came and whisked the pretty girl away to who knows where. Well, Poe seemed to know, but apparently was charged by Ghini that no one else was to know. Which Gibdo supposed was the price he paid for siding with their parents on the disapproval of the knight that had come courting.

But Ghini had been the only one of them to lead a somewhat exciting life. He and Poe were not so lucky. They had joined the castle guard in hopes that they would stop criminals in their tracks and be heroes in no time. But that didn’t happen. Nope, it was just as boring as ever…

And today was no exception.

Gibdo had been assigned to guard the Four Sword Shrine. That was actually a sore spot for Poe, who had some sort of strange fascination with famed monster trapped within the blade. But this wasn’t the first time that Gibdo had been assigned to the shrine, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. And he wished his foolish little brother would believe him when he said that the whole thing about a monster within the Four Sword was just a legend. Gibdo had been assigned here far too often to believe that anything menacing could be in that sword. Nothing menacing even passed by the shrine. The most dangerous thing that Gibdo had ever seen passing through the shrine was an extremely fat rabbit. Just a rabbit; not even a Pols Voice, just a fat rabbit.

The guard sighed at his post, wishing he could be anywhere else but here. He glanced over his shoulder at the blade he was supposed to be guarding. Knowing that nothing or no one was going to be passing by, he left his post to approach the blade. He squatted down in front of it, staring at it with all the boredom of a rowdy schoolchild being forced to sit still during their lessons.

“If there’s a monster in here, then I really am a Gibdo.” He said flatly. He stood up, still staring dully at the blade. “It’s just a rusted, old sword from a rusted, old story. Why don’t people realize that?” He nudged the hilt with his index finger. “Tch.” Finally, he kicked the flat of the blade, ignoring the ugly scraping sound within the pedestal. But nothing happened, only proving to Gibdo that he was right and anybody who believed the legend of the Four Sword was wrong.

Grumpily, he went back to his post and prepared himself for the next grueling three hours of _nothing_.

What he hadn’t expected to hear was a clattering of a sword upon stone. Puzzled, he looked over his shoulder to see that the Four Sword had fallen from the pedestal. And again, no hideous consequences. Sighing miserably, he walked over to the Four Sword to put it back in the pedestal. But just as he reached for the hilt, he was blown back feet into the air by something he just couldn’t explain. As he tumbled on the floor and raised his head, he realized that the Four Sword Shrine wasn’t at all peaceful or boring anymore. The wind was blowing madly all over the place, causing the surrounding trees to flail, the small little animals to run away frantically, and Gibdo realizing he’d probably done something very bad. Because the source of these wild gales was from the fallen Four Sword.

He watched in horror as a shape seemed to emerge from the Four Sword – one that was only supposed to be a legend.

The wind had died down as quickly as it had begun when the shape had taken definite form. A black sphere with a great red eye, horns and several pairs of wings. Gibdo gaped in terror at the sight. He wanted to scream, but his voice was lost. He wanted to run, but he was frozen on the floor. He just prayed that he would not be found…

But he was, of course. It was difficult not be spotted when you were the only thing metal coated in the immediate vicinity.

Vaati had easily caught the glare of the sun off the soldier’s armor, and his red eye had focused right on Gibdo. The great eye looked down to the Four Sword and then back to the soldier. “ _A_ soldier _released me?_ ” It was a rather horrible voice that Gibdo wished he was deaf to. He could only let out a hoarse whimper in response. That one little whimper seemed to have made Vaati all too happy. There was a glint of enjoyment in the large eye that was difficult to miss. “ _Ah yes; I thought I heard something like a disbeliever. What was it you had said? ‘A rusted, old sword from a rusted, old story’?_ ” He cackled before closing the space between the fallen guardsman and himself. His eye was just inches away from Gibdo’s face. “ _And as you can see, that rusted, old story is quite real, and he’s eager to start a ruckus up again. And you-_ ” one of the smaller, batty wings that kept the giant eye aloft pointed right at the soldier, “ _-can play_ your _part by telling your dear princess that I’ll be coming for her._ ”

Then there was the sound of horrible laughter before another massive galestorm occurred. Gibdo closed his eyes to keep any of the dust and dirt from billowing into his eyes, but by the time everything had died down and he opened his eyes… the beast had gone. And the Four Sword was still laying quite useless on the floor… like him.

Gibdo wanted to cry. Not only had he been an idiot non-believer and released an evil that the princess had worked so hard to keep sealed up, he was also responsible for telling the princess what had happened and what the beast had said. And then of course, there was the fact that he had peed himself and essentially did nothing to attempt to prevent the escape of the monster in question. Whoop-de-freaking-do. Nothing like telling the princess you were an idiot _and_ a coward.

“I’m going to get fired.” Gibdo sobbed woefully as he picked himself up and wobbly ran back to Hyrule Castle.

* * *

Zelda paced back and forth in her room nervously. This was bad. This was very, _very_ bad. Vaati was on the loose again because some idiot soldier had to be a non-believer! Well, was, he certainly wasn’t one now. But still, whether someone was a believer or not really should have been taken into account before assigning anyone to the Four Sword Shrine!

There was a knock on her door. She shrieked in surprise.

That shriek caused the door to burst open and several guards to swoop in, encircling her with spears pointed outward. They all looked around savagely, looking for the beast that dared try to kidnap their fair princess.

“No, no,” she assured them, “I’m sorry, I’m fine. I was just… surprised.”

The guards then quickly formed a single file line, standing at the ready. They did not leave.

Link then walked in, obviously a bit taken aback by the sudden entrance of the soldiers and then how it was apparently for nothing. He stepped into her room awkwardly, and then said, “Erm, well, another guard just went to retrieve the Four Sword… Alright, I need to ask, what happened?”

She flushed slightly, only mumbling, “I was a bit jumpy…”

Link strained to hear, but he nodded. It was understandable, what with Gibdo’s news… He only just hoped that brother of his was a more competent soldier and brought back the Four Sword without issue. “Well, we should probably wait in Great Hall. There’s more protection for you there, Zelda.” Link assured.

Zelda twiddled her fingers. “I’m not sure about that… I mean, wouldn’t going to a larger area only make it easier for Vaati to break in and wreak havoc. Honestly, here might be a-”

“Please, princess!” One of the soldiers interrupted. “I feel Link’s suggested course of action is wise. While there may be more space there, that also means more soldiers in between yourself and the beast! We are gladly willing to lay down our lives for you!” The other soldiers nodded adamantly in agreement.

“Well, that’s fine, but I don’t _want_ anybody to lay down their lives for me. If we’re lucky, that soldier will return soon with the Four Sword and Link can take care of Vaati before anybody dying is necessary.” Though honestly, she didn’t like the idea of anyone dying, necessary or not.

But the soldiers would have none of it. Even Link, who was willing to agree with the logic behind Zelda’s line of thinking, went unheard. Zelda deeply wished her father was there, for surely he would be able to knock some sense into these men. But alas, the king was on vacation in Lake Hylia and no one could contact him.

What incredibly lousy timing for a vacation.

So Link, Zelda, and the soldiers went to the Great Hall. The princess immediately felt out of her comfort zone. Every guard in the immediate vicinity had to have been in the Great Hall at that moment. And nothing said “Relax, you’ll be fine, Princess,” more than an army of armor clad soldiers pointing a spear at even the slightest speck of dust. Clearly, she wasn’t the only one jumpy. And that was not good for anyone’s morale. Despite that, time dragged on. She remained quiet, Link standing by her side and offering a comforting smile. It was a smile she couldn’t help but return, even though she knew she truly didn’t feel much better.

Link just had that quality about him, the one that made her smile at all times. And that was good, to be able to smile in adversity. Even though it may not have made the situation better, for the briefest moment in time it seemed like everything would be better.

And just as soon as she was beginning to believe that everything would be okay… it was not.

Zelda had been completely correct in her earlier assumptions. A larger space was, in fact, quite ideal for a beastly wind mage to barge in. And he did not use the doors. No, Vaati was all for making entrances. And what better way to make an entrance than to break through the giant stained glass window that decorated the back of the Grand Hall.

Glass shattered and fell, and the soldiers immediately went to cover Zelda with their shields. In the process, Link was pushed out of the way, despite Zelda’s cries for them to leave Link by her side. Vaati laughed at the chaos he had stirred by his unconventional appearance. And in his demon form, the laugh gravelly and rough, and absolutely terrifying (Gibdo, who, despite being suspended without pay, was present, had the unfortunate luck of peeing himself again). The mage was quick to spot his prize, as she had to be where the huddled mass of guards were. With his mastery of the wind, he easily threw them aside and swooped down, extending a massive claw to grab the girl.

His aim was true, he caught the princess. She screamed flailed, and punch and kicked, and was being an all around pain in the butt to keep a hold of, but he didn’t worry. His claws had never failed to keep a princess within their grasp, and he knew they wouldn’t fail him now. But Vaati hadn’t expected to feel a sudden weight pulling him down. His great eye looked down to the side, to see an idiotic boy in green hanging desperately onto one of wings. He hissed at the sight, and shook the wing lightly. But the boy was persistent and wasn’t letting go.

The situation soon became cause for alarm as a soldier had grabbed onto Link. A chain started to form, weighing down the wind mage even more. Zelda cheered them on, but Vaati wasn’t willing to put up with any of this. He summoned a powerful gale, one that managed to loosen Link’s grip on his wing just enough so that a sharp turn from the mage sent the boy plummeting down into the mass of soldiers. The princess shrieked for her hero, but Vaati paid no mind. He let out a triumphant laugh and then quickly flew away from the broken window he had entered.

Link pushed his way (with great effort) through the soldiers and to the window. Which was rather useless as the window was on the second story while Link was still very much grounded. So by the time he had gotten to the window, all he could do was helplessly look up and watch the speck that was Vaati and the princess fade higher into the sky.

“I got it! I got i- what happened?” Everyone turned to the doors of the Great Hall. Standing there was the guardsman called Poe, holding the Four Sword like a delicate package within both his hands. He looked around, oblivious that all the blame for what had just occurred was now being put on him for being just a bit too late. Of course, the damage to the Great Hall and the general gloomy mood was quite enough for the soldier to put together. He looked at the broken stained glass window and then frowned with deepest disappointment.

He had just missed the great wind mage Vaati! How unlucky was he?


	2. Act 2

Despite her best efforts, Zelda could not worm her way out of Vaati’s grasp. As he soared through the sky with her still wrapped within his claws, it came to the point where she figured she didn’t want to fight. Mostly because the drop would likely kill her, and she rather enjoyed living. However, the more the princess thought of the situation, the more she was thinking maybe death would preferable to being the prisoner of a feared monster who would do who knows what to her. She didn’t even want to think of it, and truthfully, she was terrified of the possibilities.

Eventually, however, she did see their destination – a place she’d heard only legends of: The Palace of Winds. She didn’t admire it, however. Because although it was a beautiful spectacle to behold, she also knew it was her prison. So she did look at it – and really look at it. She did her best to memorize every tower and its location, every outdoor hall, everything she could see while she was still on the outside of it to try and see if maybe she could find a safe way off of it when she was actually there.

She did her best in that short amount of time to ingrain the sight of the Palace within her brain before Vaati picked up speed and flew them right into the Palace. He dropped down to what seemed to be a courtyard with such speed, Zelda thought he surely had a death wish. But the stop was rather abrupt, and she hadn’t quite noticed the fact that the beast had lowered her to the floor. Standing stock still, she hadn’t quite registered that there was no longer a massive claw trapping her, or that the claw had all but disappeared, retracting into the one eyed demon.

He did not move, and Zelda made a break for it. She realized how incredibly stupid that was as soon as she began to run, as this was Vaati’s turf. But she wasn’t stopping either – the drive to want to get away from the sorcerer being too strong for her to stop even if she had wanted to. She hadn’t run halfway across the courtyard before she saw an eddy of wind appear before her. The princess skidded to a stop, nearly falling over as she did so. The only reason she stopped was because someone had caught her.

… Wait. What?

Puzzled, she looked up to see who it was that had kept her from falling. It was a young man, cloaked in purple and with hair the color of lilac. He was very good looking and Zelda found herself blushing… until she realized the same sense of wrongness that she had felt from Vaati was coming off of this smiling young man. She put it together. Her blush quickly faded and she let out a rather unbecoming squeal before attempting to scramble away.

Vaati was quick to grab her and pull her back. “Tut, tut, princess, you should know better.” He hissed in her ear.

“Release me.” She demanded.

“As you wish.” He let her go with a smirk. “But you’ll find that it would be rather difficult to leave without my say so.”

She turned on her heel to glower at him, not wanting to think about the truth of the statement. “Link will defeat you.” She said matter-of-factly.

Despite the still smiling face, Zelda thought she saw something flash behind the mage’s eyes. He then began to walk, circling around her much like a lion around a gazelle. “Have so much faith in your beau?” He asked sardonically.

“He is not,” Zelda said firmly, “But it doesn’t matter whether he is or not, because he will defeat you. He’s done it bef-”

“No – his ancestors have before, not him.” Vaati snapped. “And I’ll see to it that he will never reach here.”

“He’ll find a way-” Zelda began, but stopped when Vaati had quickly closed the space between them.

Wearing a spiteful smile he told her, “No he won’t.” She stood her ground, ignoring his close proximity. She didn’t want to give him the pleasure of seeing her flinch or try to run away. After a moment, she wondered if that was the right course of action, because if anything, his grin seemed to broaden more. “You’re a fighter. Even now, you refuse to back down because you don’t want to give me the satisfaction of seeing your fear.”

“I don’t fear you.” Her words came out venomously.

With a chuckle, Vaati caressed a lock of her hair and said, “Then you’re either very foolish or very brave – though the two aren’t mutually exclusive.” She clenched her jaw, restraining the urge to spit in his handsome face. In fact, she had to remind herself that if he so wished, he could very well throw her off this floating palace. Apparently, he’d caught on to her line of thinking and chuckled again, “Brave then; or at least you _seem_ intelligent.” Her jaw clenched again. “And I rather hope that’s the case; I’m none too fond of the idea of a foolish bride.”

Alright, he had just been asking for it that time. She slapped him – or tried to. He had caught her hand. But that wouldn’t stop her, she still had another free hand. So she tried to slap him with that hand. But he had avoided her left slap completely by deftly moving behind her, all the while keeping his hand over hers lightly.

The next thing she knew, he was right behind her. There were quite a few reasons why she didn’t like that. The first was that his grip was once again tight over her own hand. The second reason why she was sure she did not like this was the fact that his other hand had just slid up from her thigh to her waist. Reason number three was that she knew Vaati was enjoying this far too much; she could see his wide grin from her peripheral vision – and anything that made him smile she knew would not make her smile. “Let me go.” She hissed.

“I’ll never let you go, princess.” He hissed right back, his grip on her hand tightening possessively.  “You’re mine now, and no one shall take you from me.”

She shuddered. And much like there were several reasons for not liking how she was being handled, there were several reasons as to why she shuddered. The first was that she could sense he had truly meant what he had said. He really intended to keep her here and he was truly confident that no one was going to take her form him. Just hearing him speak like that filled her with a sense of dread because a part of her believed those unwavering words. The second reason she shuddered was to resist doing something very unprincess-like and would likely warrant her being thrown off the edge and into the ground hundreds of feet below – which was to say, kick him in the balls.

And the third and final reason was… she actually kind of liked what he’d said. The actual content of the words themselves she despised. The way in which he said the words, however… He truly believed what he was saying. He was incredibly confident in his abilities; it could’ve been arrogance, but the way in which he spoke said that maybe he was just speaking the truth. And more than that, those words had power behind them – as if to make it seem as if they were all the more truthful… and that… that was attractive…

Unfortunately, Vaati seemed to be able to sense that. Maybe it was the slight blush in her face or the fact that she dropped her guard for the smallest of moments, or maybe even the fact that she actually seemed to finally avert her gaze. “Oh? Where’s your fight, _princess_?” He cooed mockingly, pulling her close enough so that she felt her back against his torso. “Giving in already?”

A flare of anger rose up in her. She pulled herself away and then spun on the ball of her foot to go and attempt to slap him again. A deafening roar shook the very air. Zelda froze where she stood, while Vaati looked upwards in alarm. A great shadow passed over them as a massive winged creature extended its talons to perch upon the tallest tower of the Palace of Winds.

The princess gaped at the dragon. “Va-Vaati…” she stuttered, “Th-there’s a drag-”

“I can see that.” Vaati neither sounded nor looked pleased. At the same time, he did not seem to be afraid either. And that was because he wasn’t. He was more outraged that during his absence that someone dared to move in on his territory.

“Is there supposed-”

“No.” He responded through clenched teeth. He looked the princess and said, “Stay out of sight; I’m going to have a word with it – and don’t try to escape; as I said before, it’s rather difficult to leave the Palace without my say so.”

Her glare returning, she said nothing to him, but simply watched as she felt the wind pick up around him and carry him off towards the dragon. Much as she hated the idea of it, she did go indeed take cover. She knew that when Vaati said he was going to have a word with it, he meant things might get ugly. And much as Zelda believed she could take care of herself, she was sure she would only get in the way if a battle broke out between the mage and the dragon. But she wasn’t about to listen to Vaati on that ‘don’t try to escape’ condition. She knew that he probably knew that too, and she also knew that he was probably right in saying that she couldn’t get off of this floating palace without his help. But goddess damned she was going to try! She may be a damsel in distress but she was going to be such a pain about it, she would make sure of that!

Vaati, in the meantime, flew up to the tower hastily. To say he was not pleased was an understatement – especially since he knew that blasted girl was going to try and run. They always did, but he had a habit of repeating himself just in case one of them would listen. Whatever the case, the faster the dragon left, the easier it would be to find the girl.

The dragon took notice of Vaati and growled – a low rumbling sound that was so deep, it was barely audible. It was a truly massive dragon, very top heavy and with a scarred hide. Perhaps to the average person it would have been terrifying. To a wind mage so powerful he could not truly be killed, it was just a nuisance. The mage came to a stop several meters away from its massive head, ignoring the hissing the dragon was letting out.

“Good afternoon.” Vaati managed as pleasantly as he could… so it didn’t come out very pleasant at all.

“ **It was until you pests came along,** ” the dragon rumbled threateningly.

The mage gave the dragon an icy smile. “I realize that when you came about this palace, it may have been deserted. But this is my abode, dragon.”

“ **Onox!** ” The dragon hissed angrily. “ **I am called Onox! And who are you to claim this place, little bug?** ”  He’d risen up on his hind quarters and spread his wings out, the leathery furls twitching angrily in a great threat display.

Vaati’s eyebrow twitched. A bug, was he? A quick hand movement and a sharp gale cut across the dragon’s face, causing it to snap to the side as if it had received a slap. “I’d watch your overlarge tongue before you call your betters bugs, _dragon_.” The mage snapped venomously. “I am the Sorcerer of Winds, Vaati – the rightful proprietor to the Palace of Winds! And if you value your scaly hide, I suggest you leave before _my_ Palace obtains a dragon-skin decorating theme!”

Onox snarled and snapped at the mage, but Vaati did not move. The dragon, he knew, was trying to save himself a humiliating expulsion. The snaps were half-hearted, weak attempts to try and intimidate Vaati, which weren’t working seeing as the snaps did not even come close to the mage. The creature only snapped around three times before letting out a half-hearted roar of retaliation and then flying away rapidly. Just to spite him, Vaati momentarily took the wind from beneath the beast’s great wings, causing it to drop and how in panic. When the dragon managed to catch the air again, he swiveled around and roared his outrage, but he did not go back. The wind mage smirked. It served the great brute right for encroaching upon his territory.

Naturally, though, Onox was not amused. Whether that purple bug was Vaati or not, he had just been humiliated! It was a blow to the dragon’s pride, one he would not stand for. His eyes caught sight of the mage’s companion, scurrying below. The dragon bared its teeth, recognizing the figure so reminiscent of Hyrule’s princess beneath him. He had no doubts it was her, actually. And what luck! It ends up Onox could use a super-powered princess! He looked back to the mage, who had been glowering expectantly at him, no doubt having thought the dragon would have left by now. The dragon puffed up his chest and then let out a great roar which quickly turned into a belch of flame.

It forced the mage move, but more importantly, it distracted the purple bug. And during that time, Onox swooped down towards the Palace and landed right before the princess, who had screeched in panic. She threw some sort of magic at him which just bounced off of him uselessly. A swoop of a front claw had the girl uselessly struggling in his grasp, and without further adieu, he leapt back into the sky.

An extremely displeased Vaati had been flying towards him, readying some sort of spell. But Onox snorted triumphantly and showed off the princess in his claw – his grip evidently having been too tight for the girl to handle. She lolled in his claw much like a ragdoll, and the sight of it caused the mage to come to an abrupt halt in the sky. “ **Yes, sorcerer! It seems I’ve taken your bride right from under you – and she’ll have an even better use for me as my next _meal_!** ”

Vaati, as history could often tell, was not a patient man. When he got particularly ambitious, sometimes he skipped little details in his impatience. He also had a bit of a temper issue, one which caused him to do things that didn’t quite allow him to think clearly when in a rage. He’d been working on remedying that, because it would be rather embarrassing to be continuously foiled for making the same mistakes.

He thought he’d done a rather good job so far, being direct and to the point, grabbing his soon-to-be-bride immediately and without much banter. As far as he was concerned, he was displaying a great deal of mercy and patience with the dragon – especially since he had no plans to kill the beast more than just remind it of its proper place. Unfortunately, there were just some things that could ruin the practice of patience and anger management in an instant. For example, a dragon stealing what he had rightfully kidnapped easily could send him into an uncontrollable rage.

And it did.

Vaati flew at the dragon with every intention of using his magic to rip Onox into tiny, irreparable piece and get his woman back. He hadn’t quite thought that the dragon would quickly make a complete turn in the opposite direction and lash his tail out right at him… but that was mostly because the mage had been busy envisioning that dragon-hide decoration theme he’d threatened earlier. So the dragon’s tail smashed right into the mage, throwing him away from Onox and the princess and leaving him extremely disoriented. And then disoriented turned to blacked out when the mage made contact with the floor of the Palace of Winds.

* * *

 

Zelda awoke to quite uncomfortable situation. For one, she was wrapped up in claws again, though these were significantly larger than the last. She was also in the air again, she noticed. However, this flight was much more uncomfortable than her last – which was saying something. Dragons, she noted, bobbed when they flew. And because this one was a particularly heavy dragon, his bobs were making her green in the face. Enough so that she made no attempt to fight back or squirm in his grip. She had the feeling that she may just throw up if she tried.

But despite the nausea, she was quite upset. Kidnapped by a monster only to get kidnapped again by _another_ monster.

 Great.

This day, by far, had to have been her worst day ever. And it was all Vaati’s fault. She’d no idea what he had said to the dragon, but it obviously didn’t like whatever was said and now she was paying for it.

Her hatred couldn’t stew, however, mostly because she felt like chucking her lunch more and more with each passing moment. She was so focused on not throwing up, she hadn’t noticed when the dragon was lowering itself on the side of a craggy mountain. As the bobbing stopped she realized the change of lighting and the different surroundings. They were in a cave now…which she supposed was only natural seeing as a dragon had kidnapped her.

The dragon lifted the claw which held her to a cliff within the cave and placed her down there. It was a bit of an automatic reaction for her to back up against the wall. The cliff was incredibly small while the drop was incredibly large. She didn’t like those odds, and was doing her damned best to not move. It was harder than it seemed, what with still feeling a bit sick from the earlier flight.

The beast let out what seemed to be rolling rumble of growls. They took her by surprise and she nearly fell, but she caught herself and glared. She glared even more when she realized the dragon had been laughing at her.

“Not hoping to make me your bride too, I hope.” She snapped shakily, her hands behind her trying to find some sort of grip on the craggy wall.

The dragon let out another rumbly laugh and said, “ **No, no. Dragons have no use for scrawny Hylian mates.** ”

“Ah, lovely then.” Zelda said. Well, that was one bad situation out of the way. Maybe she wasn’t completely doomed. She might just be able to get out of this… “Erm, I can’t say Vaati didn’t deserve that because I _don’t_ want to marry him. So you did me a favor… is there any chance that you can let me go?”

“ **No.** ”

She had a feeling that was the case. After all, if the dragon had really just wanted to take her to get on Vaati’s nerves, he probably wouldn’t have taken her to a cave to keep her captive. So Zelda needed to compromise. With a dragon. “If you release me,” she began, trying to think of what dragons liked, “Ah, I’m sure my father will grant you various treasures to add to your hoard!”

“ **My hoard is quite comfortable, thank you.** ” Said the dragon with a light chuckle.

At least he was somewhat polite… something else. A riddle contest? With a dragon? That was a terrible idea. She would lose in a second. A deal of some sort? But she really had nothing to offer. “Um… I’m afraid there’s not much I can do for you Mister…?”

The dragon laughed again. “ **Onox. And you’re actually mistaken. There is something I want from you.** ”

Zelda brightened. So there was a way out of this after all! “Really? What is it?”

“ **The princesses of Hyrule are said to have great magic within them,** ” began Onox. “ **As a dragon, magic has great value to us. And I would like your magic.** ”

She frowned. He wanted her… magic? She wasn’t sure she could give that up evenif she had wanted to. “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t know-”

“ **But I do.** ” The dragon said. He bared his teeth in what she could only assume was a grin of some sort. “ **Dragons… we have a rather unique ability that’s little known to anyone but ourselves.** ”

“R-really?” the princess asked. She wasn’t sure she liked where this was going.

“ **Yes. We dragons have the ability to absorb powerful magics.** ”

“That’s impress-” She began, thinking flattery might get her somewhere. But the dragon cut her off. “ **Through ingestion.** ”

She gaped and lost several shades of her color. The words of Onox bounced around in her head…  The dragon was going to _eat_ her? She went through the options in her head:

  * Wait for Link to save her. But how on earth could Link save her if he had no idea where she was. As far as her best friend knew, she was Vaati’s captive in the Palace of Winds. So option 1 clearly wasn’t the way to go, unless Vaati was about to go telling Link that he’d lost the princess he kidnapped – and the day that happened was the day Gorons learned to swim. She could always try to send Link a message via telepathy but that was never her strong suit…
  * Try to keep compromising with Onox. … She had the distinct impression that wouldn’t work.
  * Try to escape herself. It would be a mission in itself, but she wasn’t about to stand idly around waiting to get _eaten_. She had much better things to do with her time than that, thank you very much!
  * … Wait for Vaati to save her.



She had mixed feelings on that last one, and most of those feelings were all negative. Because Option 4 resulted in either one of two outcomes – she’d be eaten by a dragon, or she’d be saved by the mage who wished to force her into marriage. Zelda wasn’t sure which she preferred, as both seemed to contain equal amounts of wince inducing horror. At the same time, Link didn’t know where she was or her circumstances. And even if Vaati didn’t know where she was, he knew her circumstances and therefore had a much better head start. She still dreaded the idea of it… But what was worse was that he would come after her.

_“I’ll never let you go, princess. You’re mine now, and no one shall take you from me.”_

Yes, after saying something like that, he was definitely going to come after her…

… Option 3. That was the best of them, she was sure.

“So…” she began again, looking at the dragon that had been eyeing her like a piece of rare steak. “Since you haven’t eaten me now, I’m guessing there is preparation involved?” She asked.

“ **Very astute. Yes, there are things that need to be attended to – it is Old Magic, the magic of absorption. Preparations must be made.** ” Onox conceded, nodding his massive head. He then rose from his sitting position and turned, as if to leave the cave. But then he paused, looking over at the girl one last time before jeering at her, showing off extremely large, carnivorous teeth that she dearly hoped she would not see up close. “ **And after that, more preparations must be made. I imagine you would taste quite lovely with a hint of lemon. Yes… lemon pepper princess sounds delicious.** ” He taunted before he exited the cave and unfurled his great wings, flying off to who knew where…

And leaving Zelda on her poor excuse for a cliff, clinging to walls. _I’m assuming that at least Vaati would have given me space to walk around._ She thought bitterly as she peered over the edge. With a resentful sigh, the princess carefully placed her front against the wall and tried to think happy thoughts. Option 3… it just couldn’t be easy, could it?

* * *

 

Poe and Gibdo were left out of proceedings following Vaati’s break in into Hyrule Castle. In fact, they were thrown into the dungeons – not necessarily because they were thought to be conspiring with the enemy but simply so they couldn’t mess things up further. This was a sore spot for Poe, because the only thing he was guilty of was being late for a situation he didn’t even know was going to happen. Had he known that maybe heading back to the Castle at a full on sprint rather than a comfortable run would get him there in time to see Vaati, then he sure as hell would’ve sprinted! But alas… he hadn’t.

And now he was in the dungeons… with his brother… so they wouldn’t mess up anymore.

“This is your fault.” Poe said simply.

“Shut up.” Gibdo replied irritably.

“It _is_.”

“I know it is! You don’t need to remind me!” The elder brother said irritably. His eyes flashed with anger at his brother… but then the face quickly turned to one of despair and he let out a wail. Poe rolled his eyes as his brother sobbed, “I-I messed up so _bad_! And now- and now – the p-princess is – hic! – is gone! And it’s all – it’s all m-my fault!” He let out another wail through his hiccoughs and sobs.

The younger brother looked at his brother with a mixture of shame and disbelief. He was related to _this_? He grabbed his brother’s shoulders and shook him. “Snap out of it! You are a grown man and you’re whining like a woman!” Poe backhanded his brother, who stopped his howling almost immediately. Gibdo sniffled for a moment and then nodded, telling his brother he was alright. The younger reluctantly let go.

And then the two were back to staring at the walls in their prison cell in silence.

The door to the dungeons opened. Both brothers looked at each other, puzzled. They didn’t think anybody would be coming in here now what with Vaati having kidnapped the princess. The guards surely wouldn’t be out bringing in common thieves at a time like this. And they were right. It wasn’t any other guardsmen coming in. It was Link. And that just confused the two ever further. What was he doing here?

“Hey guys.” Link said, as if there wasn’t a wall of bars separating the two from him.

Gibdo just looked shamefully to the floor while Poe mumbled a, “Hi…”

“Listen, Sergeant Gibdo, I know you didn’t mean to release Vaati. And Petty Officer Poe, you just had lousy timing. Overall, you two just had some bad luck.”

“You think?” Poe said sarcastically while Gibdo kept his steady staring contest with the floor.

Link frowned. “I’m offering you guys a chance to get on everyone’s good side again, you know.”

Gibdo perked up hopefully. “You mean, everyone will forget how badly I messed up?”

“Eh, no,” Link said guiltily, but he quickly added, “But they’ll see as making up for what happened – and you’ll probably be able to keep your jobs too.”

Poe dropped some of his earlier hostility, his mood brightening at the prospect. The thought of wondering what he’d be doing once he was officially fired was rather grim, and anything that would allow him to keep his job was welcome. Gibdo was much more vocal in his appreciation, shouting, “Really?! That’s… that’s wonderful! What can we do?”

“Well, I’ve got to go on a quest to defeat Vaati and save the princess. It seems like things might be easier if I had a little help.” Link told them. “If you guys come along, I don’t see why anyone would keep blaming you two for everything. But it’ll be dangerous – there’s the possibility that we may die.”

The older of the brothers nodded, the determination evident in his face. “I’ll do anything to make up for my mistake.” Link nodded and then looked expectantly at the other brother.

Poe was less enthusiastic. He wanted to keep his job, yes… but he wasn’t liking what he had to do to keep it. The big huge blaring possible side effect of doing this was now one he liked – that being the possibility that they might die. Gibdo was the one who wanted to be the hero; Poe just wanted the excuse to lawfully stab things, something the armor of the Hylian soldier allowed him to do. That and he also really didn’t like the idea of thwarting the plans of Hyrule most feared mage. In fact, that bit actually seemed incredibly stupid to him.

… But maybe he could tag along, just stab a few things and take cover when things got too messy? Not to mention Gibdo would be expecting Poe to go… He still didn’t like the idea of it but… Crossing his arms, he muttered, “Yeah sure…”

“Great,” Link said cheerily. He grabbed the keys from the nail on the wall and opened up the cell door. The soldiers filed out of the cell; Gibdo happily; Poe grumpily.

Link led the way towards the exit, but paused at the door. He looked at Poe and Gibdo with a grimace and said, “I’m going to open the door.” Poe’s lips made a flat line; he was resisting the urge to say something extremely sarcastic. Link continued, “Don’t freak out.”

Poe forked an eyebrow and looked at his brother, who shrugged in response.

Link then opened the door and stepped out. The guards did so as well, not seeing why there was any reason to freak out. Not immediately, anyways.

Gibdo had been the first to notice, and when he had noticed, all he could do was open and close his mouth while raspy attempts at speech tried to present themselves. The younger brother merely stared at his brother first, wondering what could possibly be wrong with him now. Then he looked to where his brother had looked and had much the same reaction.

There were four Links.

“Hey, hey,” the Link in the blue tunic said. His arms were crossed and his foot was tapping in irritation. “What are these guys staring at? Do I gotta kick their asses?”

“Oh but that doesn’t sound very nice!” The Link in the red tunic said to the one in the blue.

Blue was about to snap at his red counterpart when a Link in a purple tunic let out an exasperated sigh, “Try to think of this from their point of view, Blue: They only knew Link as one person. Now they’re seeing four? I wouldn’t be surprised if they thought they were going crazy.”

“We’re not?” Gibdo finally asked. He even rubbed his eyes and opened them uop again to see if maybe he was hallucinating.

“No, you’re not,” said Link – the one in green that had come to get them. He had an expression that was mixed in between guilty and frustrated. “But they get awfully close to making me crazy…” And Link had only been around his three other selves for an hour.


	3. Act 3

Vaati awoke quite angrily and in quite a lot of pain. It wasn’t everyday anyone got slapped away by a dragon tail. But at the moment, anger overshadowed pain. Onox had stolen what he had rightfully kidnapped – and that did not make for a happy sorcerer of winds.

“There will be dragon hide decorating these halls yet.” The mage snarled under his breath as he scanned the skies, looking for any sign of the dragon and his bride-to-be. But there was no sign of the beast, and that certainly did not improve his mood. And he was about to get something else to foul his mood further.

With a _poof_ , one of his sentry eyes appeared and flitted before him. It let out a few squeaks reminiscent of a mouse, reporting to its master what it had gathered.

“ _What_!?” Vaati snapped. “What do you mean he has two more with him?!”

The sentry shuddered and then squeaked more. Vaati nodded at the elaboration, as it made more sense. There were four Links, not six (which was good because then Four Sword would have been a severe misnomer). The other two were some incompetents that Link had asked to tag along. But that was still a problem. Link was on the move… And yes, Vaati had arranged several dungeons and made sure the path to his Palace from the ground was sealed off, but he still didn’t like to hear that Link had begun his journey.

“Get the Helmaroc King,” Vaati said to the sentry quickly. “Tell him to block them off at Death Mountain Pass.”

The sentry bobbed up and down swiftly before _poof_ -ing away. Vaati then flew up a bit above the palace, trying to find where he had last seen the dragon. Not ten seconds later the sentry _poof_ -ed back. A bit taken aback at the sentry’s quick return, he forked an eyebrow at the flying eye, who hesitantly squeaked in reply.

“ _What do you mean he’s on vacation at Lake Hylia?_ ” Vaati was having an extremely difficult time not shouting. “He’s a giant _bird_ ; what could he possibly need to take a vacation for?! Tell him to go to Death Mountain Pass!”

The sentry nodded and _poof_ -ed away. Vaati did not look around again, but simply waited for the return of his sentry. Sure enough, a few seconds later the sentry returned and squeaked the Helmaroc’s reply. There was a brief silence after the sentry spoke in which the wind mage’s face twitched. In a low growl, Vaati began, “Tell Helmaroc that I don’t care if even monster birds need a break from instilling fear in the masses. I need him to go to Death Mountain Pass, and if he doesn’t go now, so help me Din, I will go over there and show him where his place is in _my_ hierarchy and _pluck every last one of those great bloody feathers off of his body!_ ” The growl he had begun with had steadily grown into the shouting he had been trying to avoid in the first place.

The sentry didn’t even nod. It just shook feebly before _poof_ -ing away. As before, the sorcerer waited for his servant’s return. Moments later, it returned, telling him everything was in order. From the way the sentry had told him, however, he was willing to bet it had excluded a few nasty names the Helmaroc had said. But that didn’t matter so long as the great bird just did as it was told.

Glad that _that_ was finally over with, he continued to resume looking for where the dragon had taken off to. Racking his memory, he’d come to the conclusion that the dragon had flown off towards the west. He frowned. It was a broad stretch of land with a broad stretch of mountains. He doubted there was any way he could track the dragon to any one particular cave – not through use of magic anyways. Dragons were immune to most magic – Vaati only really having an advantage over the creature due to mastery of the wind and just happening to know all the right ways it could make a giant flying lizard absolutely _miserable_. The downside was that a tracking spell would be useless on a dragon.

But not on a woman.

He smirked, as he saw the silver lining on this horrendously dark cloud. He stretched his cape out with a hand and examined it, his smirk turning into a grin of pride as he plucked a dirty blond hair off of the purple fabric. It seemed his prize had left him quite a useful little gift, even if she hadn’t meant to give it.

Holding the hair gingerly in front of him, he focused on it and its owner wholly and completely. Words escaped his lips, hushed and hissy words of power that somehow seemed to trail around the dirty blond thread. And then he felt it. It was a tugging sensation – something telling him that his darling girl was on the move. Curious. Either the dragon was still flying or the girl had managed to flee. Whatever the case, he was locked on to her now.

* * *

 

Zelda was not having a good time. Then again, the whole day had pretty much been a horrible experience. But right now, as she slowly and anxiously scaled her way down the craggy cliff she’d been trapped on, she was most definitely not having a good time. She’d lost her shoes just as soon as she begun this awful trek, her dress had latched and frayed on the crags, her hands and feet were getting bloodied and cut from the jagged rocks, and her muscles were screaming from the extensive climb. Looking down, she grimaced as she realized she still had half of the cliff to climb down.

No wonder her ancestors usually just sat around and waited to be rescued. The whole ‘do-it-yourself’ thing was a lot of work… Despite that thought, however, she wasn’t willing to risk the chance of Onox coming back to eat her. Or perhaps equally or potentially worse, Vaati coming to get her. She shuddered at the thought. There had to be some way she could contact Link…

She slipped, letting out a squeal in surprise and pain as she somehow managed to hold tightly to the craggy wall again. Looking down and being reminded of how bad her situation was at the moment, Zelda had to tell herself to focus on getting down and then out of this cave first before thinking about anything else. And preferably before Onox flew back in… Which had to be sooner rather than later, as she had no idea how much longer the beast would be out for.

So she continued to slowly and painfully climb her way down, until her cut feet finally felt the sweet pain of the rocky floor. She considered jumping for joy, gut she figured a better celebration of this small victory would be to mend the cuts on her hands a feet via little magic. Since healing them fully would take too much time and energy, she settled for something she could work with – which was slightly reddened but sealed up wounds. And then she all but sprinted towards the exit of the cave.

Which wasn’t a good idea, seeing as the cave exited to a very steep downward slope. She had managed a very precarious stop, standing on her tip toes and practically begging for something to push her to cause her to tumble. But she recovered, letting out a sigh of relief and looking around her surroundings – which, she’d forgotten in her glee to escape, was probably the smarter thing to do. She didn’t have to do much looking to see she was in a mountain range. Zelda wanted to scream upon finding that out. The only extensive mountain range like this was far away from… well, _everything_.

But there was no time for hissy fits now. There was a dragon who wanted to eat her, after all (though that probably was a very good reason for a hissy fit). And with no other options, she began yet another foot slicing trek down the slope, towards a half-dead thicket that seemed to be leading to a half-dead forest. Normally, she wouldn’t choose any place to run to that had a high chance of her not finding her way out, but she figured if she couldn’t find her way, then a dragon (and a wind mage) wouldn’t be able to find her.

Then she felt the air vibrating.

She paused in sheer panic, wondering who was causing it. From the rhythmic feel of the vibration, she knew it was Onox flapping those great wings. _No time to be afraid of pain, Zelda!_ She told herself as she scrambled towards the thicket. She had to get there before Onox was close enough to see her! And just as his shadow was passing over the slope, she’d tumbled into the half-dead thicket.

And she did. Not. Move.

She was barely breathing, frozen with fear and determination to not be found. She found herself quickly curling up into a ball as an earth shaking roar erupted from Onox’s cave. And from the way the temperature shot up, she was willing to guess there was a massive gout of flame coming from the cave as well. She didn’t dare look, partly because she was afraid her gaze might somehow cause Onox to locate her, if he didn’t smell her out first.

And she continued to stay there crouched up in a ball, even long after Onox had finished spitting his flame and gone off to look for her, she found herself nearly tempting Fate by asking how her day could possibly get any worse. But she would not give Fate that satisfaction, because she knew what would happen if she did. So she looked up, seeing the edges of charred and blackened rocks by the entrance to Onox’s lair. If she did not get up to leave right now, that would be her. That was all the inspiration she needed right now.

Zelda shakily stood, her legs feeling like jelly from that too–close encounter, and then continued into the forest. Numbly putting one foot in front of the other, ignoring the pain from fresh cuts (which she would not bother healing until they became truly unbearable), she found herself beginning to think that in the grand scheme of things… maybe Vaati was the lesser of two evils in this case. He wasn’t trying to eat her, after all. And attempting to escape from him would have been much less painful, she was sure. There was definitely less of a chance of being burnt to a crisp and a much larger chance of being clean and intact.

Zelda stopped in her tracks at that thought process. What had she come to? Had this day just been so grating she was thinking that _Vaati_ would have been better to deal with, just because she would have had the luxuries she was used to?

With renewed vigor, she kept on her way. She would find her way through that forest, manage to get into contact with Link (somehow), and everything would be all right from there. They’d defeat Vaati and somehow manage to get Onox out of the picture. Yes. That’s what would happen. They could throw her in any horrible experience, but she would not lose her fighting spirit, thank you very much!

After a while, half dead forest or not, she was still glad that neither the dragon nor the wind mage seemed to have tracked her there. Happy as she was for that smidgeon of good fortune, though, she was still feeling quite miserable despite her earlier burst of determination. But at least she had found a path in the forest, and hopefully it would lead her closer to Hyrule proper. But she didn’t even know if she was going the right way or which path to take if she ever came to a fork. The only bright side was that she did not worry too much about Onox finding her there. Onox could only fly over the forest due to his massive size – and if he truly valued the magic within her, he wouldn’t dare burn the forest.

That same logic did not apply to Vaati, though. He was a beast, yes, but he had the advantage of being a beast in a Hylian skin. He could quite easily enter this forest if he thought she was in inside, and being on a path would make her an easy target. Alas, she was void of any other real options, seeing as she would no doubt get lost if she strayed from the path. It was a risk she had to take…

And again, she found herself nearly tempting Fate by asking how this could possibly get any worse.

It was a rather good thing she didn’t tempt Fate too. If she had, she may not have stubbed her toe on a stone that blended in near perfectly in the ground. Of course, it didn’t seem like a good sign at the time. In fact, it just seemed very annoying and more than a little painful given her already stinging feet. But if she hadn’t paused to curse and say very un-ladylike things, she wouldn’t have caught the attention of something she didn’t even know was around.

She had stopped mid-cuss when she felt the very ground vibrate beneath her feet. Her first thought was that there was an earthquake, and that she was certainly in a horrible place to be during an earthquake. But upon noting that the trees around her were not swaying or crashing down upon the floor, she could only guess it was just something from the ground… which alarmed her even more. Of course, the most alarming thing occurred when something burst out from the ground and sent dirt flying everywhere.

Zelda, now at the point where she could pretty much deal with anything the gods through at her without screaming, just stared blankly as a what seemed to be a mass of dirt was… well, shaking the dirt off of itself. She coughed a bit, swishing a hand in front of her face to ward off the dust the creature was creating. Eyes irritated, she really didn’t get to see what had just appeared on the path before her. But she did get to hear it.

“Whoa, sorry bout that. Didn’t realize the ground was so dry here.” Said the voice.

The dust now more or less settled, she looked down to see the owner of the voice was… a bandicoot man… thing. Blinking her surprise, she barely managed a, “It’s… it’s quite all right…”

“So were you the one cursing like a sailor? Gotta admit, don’t see you human girls talking like that often.” Said the bandicoot man.

“Ah, I’m Hylian actually – it’s the ears you see…” she said, her voice still sounding slightly vacant. “Excuse me but… um, what are you exactly?”

The bandicoot man tilted his head to the side, “Huh? What am I? I’m a Mogma, of course! You humans (“Hylians,” Zelda corrected. Though the bandicoot man continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted) ain’t heard of Mogmas before?”

“Mogmas?” She repeated near skeptically. Mogmas… it did sound somewhat familiar. And as soon as that flag went off, she remembered history lessons from when she was just a tiny girl. Mogmas… they had been in Hyrule before – but a long time ago before Hyrule was even Hyrule. The first Hero – the Hero – he had interacted with Mogmas. They helped him and he helped them… That what the gist of it and she definitely couldn’t remember the details. She certainly hadn’t remembered, for example, that Mogmas were some brand of mole people… or in this case, bandicoot people. “Oh. Yes we have. It’s just been a while since we last saw Mogmas.” _A very long while_ , she added mentally.

“Huh, whoddathunk you could forget guys like us?” The Mogma asked in genuine puzzlement. But he shook his shook his head, as if reprimanding himself for getting off subject and then asked, “So Miss Human Hylian, have you seen another one of me tunneling around?”

She forked an eyebrow. “If I had, why would I ask you what you were?”

The Mogma thought about it for a moment. “Huh. Guess you’re right…” Then he shrugged and looked back to her, “So, what are _you_ doing here?”

She was taken aback by this fellow’s sudden appearance, she’d nearly forgotten herself. And a revelation sudden dawned on her. “Oh! You Mister…”

“Huh? Oh, Ledd. The greatest Mogma digger the world’s known!” Said the Mogma with pride.

“Ah, Mister Ledd! I’m Zelda, and, as you can see, I’m not in the best of states-”

“You’re not?” Ledd asked, looking the girl up and down. 

Again, Zelda forked an eyebrow. “… No, I’m not.” Though it did come into her mind that much like this was her first time seeing a Mogma, this was probably his first time seeing a humanoid person. “Anyways, there are some-” she didn’t want to say horrendously evil creatures. That may have been a bit off putting and possibly would have sent the Mogma burrowing further in the ground. “Some landmarks I don’t recognize!” She said quickly. Quickly slapping something together in her mind, she went on to say, “I’m quite lost – there are many paths here and I simply don’t know which way is the right way to Castle Town. If possible, could you lead me out of here?”

Ledd’s bandicoot-like ears twitched. “Don’t know anything about a Castle Town… But I do know a Kakariko Village. I can take you there if you like.”

The princess brightened significantly. She knew Kakariko Village – she knew where that was, and even better she knew it wasn’t far from Castle Town! “Yes! Yes, please!” She said excitedly. “Oh, thank you Mister Ledd!”

The Mogma’s chest seemed to puff out a bit, “Hehe, it’s nothing really…” But a slight but of dismay entered his expression, “Uh… you humans ain’t too good at digging are ya? Not a problem, though; you can just follow my trail.”

Again, she brightened. “Thank you so much, Mister Ledd!”

See? Who needed to be saved? Zelda was, as she had known all along, perfectly capable of handling the situation herself.

* * *

 

“All right everyone,” Link began, “We’re heading into the forest now. We can’t get distracted – the Great Fairy of the Forest is the one who’s supposed to be able to unlock the first gate to Vaati’s palace. If history’s anything to go by, he’s probably trapped her somewhere and is keeping some sort of nastiness in between us and her – _Blue, godsdammit, pay attention_.”

Blue was the problem child of the group. Link had come to the conclusion that Blue was embodiment of his reckless, headstrong, and better-than-thou attitude. Before he picked up the Four Sword, Link had a hard time imagining he even had a side like that. But if Blue was here, he must’ve… and it was not fun to deal with.

 “You’re incredibly boring. We all know this is _dangerous_ ,” Blue said, arms crossed and looking quite irritated. “ _I_ just want to get into the fray already!” A reckless grin came upon the blue garbed Link’s face before he wildly pulled out his sword and slashed at the air. “Just bring on those baddies! I’ll take care of them!”

“You’re going to kill us all.”

And there was problem child number two speaking. It was actually one of the guard brothers, the sour looking one with the hook nose by the name of Poe. He didn’t talk much, but he seemed to have a pinched look on him that made it seem like there was a bad smell under his nose all of the time. And while he was only stating the same thing that Vio had been telling Blue earlier, at least Vio had learned early on that those were… well, to put in terms his uncle would use, “Them’s fightin’ words.”

True to form, Blue snapped, “Maybe I’ll use you as a meat shield – that’d keep everyone else alive.”

“Oh, please don’t fight, you two!” Said Red Link worriedly. “We’re all a team – we should be working together!”

Blue just gave a flat stare at Red. “You know, I was joking before. Now, any chance I had of actually working as a team is dead.”

Vio just forked an eyebrow at Blue, but said nothing. As before, Vio had learned early on it was just better not to say anything at all when it came to Blue and his annoying habits. And Link had no idea where Vio managed to pull all that patience and tolerance from, because Link just wanted to bash his skull in. The only thing that kept him from doing so was remembering Zelda and her plight. Evidently, Gibdo was of the same mind.

“Don’t be so stubborn!” The guardsman said to Blue. “We have to save the princess-”

“From your mistake.” Blue finished flatly, not even glancing the guard’s way.

And that alone was enough to send the guardsman into tears, yet again wailing about how he had failed the princess and all of Hyrule.

… This was going to be an excruciatingly long journey.

After Poe slapped his brother silly, Blue shut up, and Red began to make everyone some tea (“I was lucky enough to find the loveliest mint plant!” he had said happily).

Link began again. “As I was saying… Vaati’s probably put some nastiness in between the Great Fairy and us. We need to be prepared for anything. So let’s go over our equipment. I’ve got the boomerang.”

“Bombs,” said Vio, who had just received his tea from Red and was eyeing it suspiciously.

“The sharpshooter gets the bow – and that’s why I have it.” Said Blue pridefully, shunning Red and his tea.

“Um I’ve got the Roc’s Cape!” Said Red cheerily as he handed Gibdo a cup of tea.

Gibdo morosely took the cup, sipping it lightly as Poe answered for the both of them, “Me and my big sister have our spears.”

Link nodded, taking his offered cup from Red and gulping it down... just as Vio cried out, “Wait!”

Link, Gibdo, and Red stared mid-gulp at the normally stoic Vio, who now looked positively horrified. “That wasn’t mint.”

And now that Link was getting the taste for it in his mouth… he realized Vio was right. Eyes widened with horror, he looked at his red garbed clone and said slowly, “What did you put in here?” With the look of a whipped dog, Red opened his mouth to answer… but Gibdo answered first in the form of hunching over quickly and chucking his lunch. “ _Red_?” Link asked, feeling himself paling at the sight of Gibdo’s hacking. And whether it was because of the fact that he had just seen the guardsman throw up or the effects of whatever his incarnation of innocence had put in their tea, he was beginning to feel the need to throw up as well.

“I- I thought it was mint,” said red hoarsely, looking green around the gills himself. “It was just the prettiest shade of green on these lovely red stems, three leaves each-”

“ _Red_ stems? _Three_ leaves per stem?” Vio said incredulously. “That’s poison ivy!”

And then Link couldn’t hold it anymore. He hunched over and just let loose.

“Gross.” Blue flinched, not hiding his disgust.

Poe, on the other hand, just wanted to laugh at their misfortune. That was until Green Link managed to stop his vomiting long enough to say, “You three… you three have to go without us.”

“ _What_?!” Gasped the younger of the guard brothers in horror.

“We can’t… Zelda needs us. You three can still go, so go.” Link instructed before hunching over and throwing up again.

“Eurgh. Sure thing.” Blue said, getting up and all too ready to leave the vomit festival.

“B-b-but-” Yet Poe couldn’t think of anything to say.

Vio forked an eyebrow at the guardsman and then said, “You’d rather stay here?”

“You have to… have to go, Poe. For the p-princess.” Gibdo gasped.

Poe grimaced and nodded, hesitantly following Vio and Blue into the forest of the Great Fairy. He tried to look on the bright side… he’d get to stabs things and he’d be away from the horrid smells of throw up… But he still couldn’t help but wish he could be somewhere else – anywhere else, but walking into something that may very well get him killed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mogmas are bandicoots in my eyes, not moles. >:


	4. Act 4

Ledd the Mogma wasn’t bad company, Zelda found. He wasn’t the sharpest knife in the shed, but he was considerate and nice – which was definitely a very welcome change of pace. There wasn’t much time to talk, as the Mogma seemed unwilling to surface, simply digging close enough to the surface so that Zelda had a trail to follow. But he always made sure to see if she was still close behind and if she needed a break, the Mogma happily obliged. Those breaks were when the two would engage in true conversation, and Ledd would happily chatter on about digging for treasures. Which wasn’t to say Ledd wasn’t interested in her circumstances. He was actually very thoughtful and interested to know how Zelda came to be lost in said forest. Zelda, who may have admired how much of a perfect gentleman the Mogma was being, still had no desire to explain in detail what had happened. She found those instances were quickly remedied when she brought up some sort of treasure she’d heard and if he’d ever found anything like said treasure.

After those breaks, they continued on the trek, and Zelda nearly jumped for joy when Ledd announced, “We should be near the edge of the forest. Kakariko’s right on the other side.”

“That’s wonderful!” She said out loud. Once they were there, she could find the mayor of the town, get everything sorted… she’d be on her way back to Hyrule Castle in no time, Link could handle Vaati and somehow they would find a way to deal with Onox… Everything would work itself out! She welcomed the un-patched sunlight as it fell, and savored the sight of buildings not too far from where she stood.

That was until she felt an all too familiar forceful vibration in the air. Immediately, she looked up, searching for a sign of the dragon while. She could barely make out Ledd asking if there was anything wrong as she scanned the skies. The horror only rose inside of her when she could only conclude that the pounding air was coming from the obscured sky behind him – covered by the woods. And as if things couldn’t get worse, she heard Onox let out a might roar. Even though she almost let out a shriek, she held it in as her legs automatically took her back into the forest and had her cowering behind a tree.

“Yo! Zel, where ya going?! Kakariko’s _that_ way!” Ledd asked, actually hopping out of his hole and carrying himself right behind her on his arms (it ended up his lower body was tiny; she couldn’t imagine those legs could carry anything anywhere. But of course, she hadn’t noticed this at the time).

The princess shushed him harshly and pointed upwards. The bandicoot man had no idea why until a massive shadow passed over them. Onox flew past the forest, hovering in the air and seemingly looking around for something. The massive dragon remained hovering for a while before letting out a “ **Harumph!** ” and flying off again. But even after he was out of sight, the air was still vibrating.

“Whoa…” Ledd squeaked. “That was… a dragon…”

But Zelda ignored the bandicoot man and ended up thinking out loud as she paced back and forth, “Is he… is he smelling for me…?”

“Huh? Smelling for you? Why we he be doing tha-” He paused for a moment before saying, “Huh, who’s _that_?”

She stopped dead in her tracks as she followed Ledd’s gaze, only to be even more horrified. She could see Vaati floating right where Onox had been just minutes before, and he too seemed to be looking for something… And he’d found it. As soon as she’d caught sight of the purple cloaked sorcerer, he spun around midair and locked eyes right with her.

She spun on her heels and ran deeper into the woods, resisting the urge to shriek like a banshee as she did so. And then she ran into a wall. She wasn’t quite sure how, but she’d slammed into a transparent blue wall. She spun around, only to see she was encased on all sides. In fact, now that she’d gotten a look at it all, she was inside of what appeared to be a blue crystal. The scream she’d held in came out, though more out of frustration than fear.

“I’d avoid screaming, if I were you,” she heard Vaati say. “If the dragon hears you you’ll be bringing more trouble on _both_ of us.”

She shut her mouth and gritted her teeth, glaring daggers at the sorcerer who had easily caught up. He was looking her up and down through the crystal with a frown and then he glared up at the sky. “To see that the beast has put you in such a state… It makes my blood boil.” He snarled.

“Let me out of this crystal.” She growled.

He glanced at her and forked an eyebrow. “So you can run again? I’d rather not have to chase you down again, dear.”

Zelda nearly said very un-ladylike things when something flew at Vaati and hit him square on the back of the head. There was a very obvious flash of anger in the sorcerer’s expression as he flinched.

“Hey! Hey you… you let her down!” Ledd the Mogma cried out, evidently having burrowed back in the ground and arming himself with balls of compressed dirt.

Vaati put a hand to the back of his head and then examined the dirt on his fingers. Zelda held in a smirk at seeing the mage’s eye tic. But then she feared for her newfound Mogma friend when Vaati turned on his heel to face the bandicoot man. “If you have any sense of self-preservation, I would put that ball of dirt down.” The wind mage said coldly.

Ledd, who had a fist full of dirt he was ready to throw, hesitated for the briefest of moments. But he puffed out his chest and regained his courage, hurling the ball right at the mage. Unfortunately for the Mogma, Vaati was on guard and ready for the next dirt ball. He very easily shredded it in midair with a small eddy. “Perhaps you don’t understand,” Vaati said coolly, “I am not to be played with. You have kept the girl safe, and for that I thank you. But if you throw one more-”

Zelda shrieked, “Ledd, no!” just a second too late. The Mogma let another ball of dirt fly, and this time, Vaati did not just deflect the ball. He uprooted the Mogma and was about to send him flying. But Zelda had been right on time with her second shriek, “No Vaati, wait!”

“Or _what_?” He snapped at the girl impatiently.

“Hey, hey! Lemme go!” Ledd cried out uselessly, trying to struggle against bonds he couldn’t see in midair.

“Or… or I’ll never forgive you!” The princess said harshly, her face reddening from how stupid it probably sounded.

And stupid it did sound. Vaati rolled his eyes and drawled sarcastically, “You’ll never forgive me? Oh, how will I ever live with myself?” He turned his attention back to the suspended Mogma, with every intention of slamming Ledd into the nearest tree as forcefully as possible.

That was the plan until the canopies of the half dead trees above them began to shake and shed their leaves wildly. Before anyone could quite register what was happening, a massive claw came and pulled several trees out of the ground.

“ **Found you!** ”

Vaati dropped Ledd, quickly speeding in front of the crystal so that he was in between the blasted dragon and Zelda. “She is _mine_ , dragon.” He hissed.

 The dragon let out a grating chuckle. “ **She’s my dinner. And I see you wrapped her up for me. Very thoughtful, mage.** ”

And then it began again, the battle between mage and dragon. And while Vaati unleashed his magic upon the dragon while the dragon attempted to take to the skies and spit his flames, Zelda was trying to find away out of her crystal prison. She slammed her fists against the wall, tried her best to use her own magic to dispel it, and then again tried physical force. But nothing even made a dent in the surprisingly very solid blue crystal. And then she saw Ledd, groggily picking himself up from his rough landing.

“Ledd!” She called out. “Ledd, you have to get me out of here! Please!”

The Mogma didn’t seem to register her words immediately, but as the shadow of the massive dragon and the significantly smaller shadow of the wind mage passed over the bald patch of forest, Ledd seemed to have awakened out of his stupor quite quickly. Scurrying over upon his hands towards the crystal, he actually managed to stand upright to touch the crystal and get a feel for it. He frowned, letting a claw glide across the surface of the gem. Both Mogma and princess frowned upon seeing not even the slightest trace of a scratch was left on the surface.

“Well, hold on Zel,” the Mogma said. The princess didn’t bother to mention she had nothing to hold on to, but Ledd had already sounded so unsure, it seemed like a bad idea to point out petty details. So she mentally braced herself, and she was glad she did. With plenty of very obvious effort, Ledd scooped the whole crystal up in one arm and ran a lopsided and not entirely quick run aided with his free arm. Much like most of the rides she’d had that day, this one was very uncomfortable, especially with the crystal walls around her. But she wasn’t about to complain, seeing as how Ledd was currently the only one who wanted to genuinely help her.

Ledd may have been slow, but whatever speed he had been going at had been just enough to save them from the flurry of flame that descended from above. Zelda let out a shriek at the sight, and Ledd was letting out his own scream of terror. Luckily, that fear worked in their favor, because the Mogma managed to reach speeds he could have never imagined he could ever reach. But even with his lopsided run, they’d barely managed to make it out of the burning woods.

“Keep going, Ledd!” Zelda cried desperately.

Lungs burning, Ledd didn’t reply but simply nodded vigorously. But as much as he wanted to keep going, he had reached his limit. He wasn’t at all used to using his legs, and even with the help of one of his arms it was still grueling work to run. Not to mention this had probably been the first time he had ever run _ever_. So even though all his thoughts were focused on running away from the situation up above as quickly as possible… he tripped.

His arm had lost its grasp upon Zelda’s crystal, and the imprisoned girl ended up bouncing upon the yellowing grass and skidding ahead of the Mogma. In the instance of that bounce, however, the sunlight gleamed upon the crystal…

And both mage and dragon took note of the princess’s new location. Zelda, noticing that she’d been spotted once again, slammed her fists upon the walls of her crystalline pen, shouting, “Ledd! Ledd, hurry! _Please_!”

“I-I’m going, Zel!” The Mogma stuttered as he picked himself up on his front claws and headed towards her.

But the dragon and the mage quickly stared at one another before Vaati quickly zoomed down to retrieve his princess. Onox, however, wanted to make sure that the purple pest would not get the girl… no matter what the cost. He belched his flames right at the crystal.

The princess found herself letting out another scream at the sight of Ledd being seemingly swallowed up by the flames, and then the realization that the flames were heading right for her.

And then her crystal flew across the grass, away from the wave of flame that had headed for her. Her voice lost, her eyes simply went to the closest thing they saw nearby: Vaati. He was discarding his cloak, which seemed to have caught some of Onox’s flames. And it was with that she realized that Vaati had saved her crystal from the flame. And for the briefest of moments, seeing him stand there and glaring at Onox… he looked, dare she say it… heroic.

But it was only for the briefest of moments, because Zelda wasn’t about to forget who had put her in the horrible crystal. One good deed did not excuse countless others. “Vaati, release me!” She demanded, slamming her hands against the crystal.

“Quiet, woman,” he snapped harshly, not even looking back at her. “I’ve a dragon to skin.” Without another word, he took to the skies again, where he and the dragon continued their spat.

Zelda, as seemed to be the fashion throughout the whole day, was not happy. And as she looked at the charred field before her, she felt a knot in her stomach twist. There was no sign at all of Ledd, and she could only assume the worst. “I’m so sorry, Ledd…” She whispered lightly.

And then her attention was drawn back to the battle, for Vaati had apparently taken the wind from underneath Onox’s wings. The dragon fell into the still burning forest, and the earth literally shook at his impact. With wide eyes, she watched as Vaati, still in the air, shot spell after spell at the grounded dragon, who had resorted to using his wings as a sort of shield. Again, wide-eyed at the spectacle, she couldn’t help be somewhat amazed that he had a dragon on the defensive.

_“No one shall take you from me.”_

His words echoed in her head again. And seeing him take on this dragon… _He really meant it._ And that was a thought that inspired horror. If he was doing this to a dragon, what on earth what he do to Link? … But despite that, she also found herself blushing at the fact that he’d meant those words. _Oh Zelda! Don’t be thinking that makes him a good man!_ She reprimanded herself.

Meanwhile, Onox lowered his wings to throw a stream of white hot fire at the mage. Vaati managed to fork the fire with his mastery of the wind, the flames never touching him. But it seemed the dragon had counted on that. As soon as the fire stopped, the dragon made to slap the mage with his tail.

But Vaati was not about to be slapped with a dragon tail again.

While it would have been much easier to simply avoid the tail, the mage had noticed a kink. And with that kink came a weakness in the dragon’s scaly hide – the armor that protected it from most magic. And with a smirk, the sorcerer summoned a gale that sliced the tail right off at the kink. Onox howled in pain as his tail thrashed in midair and sent a shower of his own blood upon him. Triumphantly, Vaati jeered, “You honestly thought that would work _twice_?”

Zelda was amazed to see that Onox had a definitive smirk upon his draconic face… and she wasn’t sure she ever wanted to see it again. The dragon launched upwards, the loss of his tail apparently having done nothing to his sense of balance. And perhaps what had taken both the mage and the entrapped princess by surprise was that the dragon was _faster_.

“Oh no…” Zelda moaned. Because Vaati had fallen into the dragon’s trap. Onox had wanted his tail to get cut off to lose weight and therefore increase his speed. _Oh why couldn’t he just have been like the silly girls in Castle Town and starve himself!?_ Of course, the thought had her surprised at herself… because this meant in a situation where she wasn’t supposed to root for either side, she had been rooting for Vaati.

The dragon quickly zoomed, snapping at Vaati with massive jaws. The sorcerer, not having expected the sudden speed boost, had barely been able to back away in time and definitely had little to no time to conjure a counterattack. Of course, being caught off guard just for that one moment had been an enormous setback; Onox didn’t give the mage any chances to think, and while Vaati still had the winds on his side, the dragon was sticking so closely to him it would’ve been dangerous to himself to cast any misbalancing gusts around. Of course, the close proximity also meant Onox had less of a need to aim. A stream of fire followed the mage near constantly, and the mage found it difficult to think of how he could manage to get back on the offensive again. He figured he would get his chance the moment the dragon stopped to take a breath. After what seemed like far too long, Onox’s jet of flame did eventually cease. At that point, Vaati took a chance and unleashed a gale that would misbalance them both.

The dragon roared in shock, not having thought that the mage would risk himself like that. But Vaati wasn’t the only one who could think fast in a pinch. After all… gravity was a constant – even for wind mages. And Onox was a very big dragon. As they both dropped, struggling to regain control over whatever kept them in flight, Onox maneuvered himself close enough to the wind mage so that a flap of his mighty wing managed to bat the mage further down.

That left Vaati dazed for a bit, but he’d managed to snap back to his senses and catch his balance in midair immediately after words. With a snarl, he turned around to face the dragon and call him out for his cheap shot, only to see that Onox - who had also regained his balance – was hovering above with yet another satisfied smirk.

But Zelda could see why Onox had been letting out another toothy grin. She’d barely had any idea of what she was doing when she had cried out in her loudest shriek, “Vaati, behind you!”

For Onox’s cut off tail was still thrashing about on the charred remains of the forest. And Vaati hadn’t really taken into account just how near the surface of the earth he was.

So, for the second time that day, Vaati had been knocked aside by a dragon tail. Luckily, he had just managed to hear Zelda’s cry of warning, so unlike last time, he managed to misdirect most of the blow due to a quickly constructed shield. It shattered upon impact, but none of the tough dragon hide managed to touch him. Which wasn’t to say he didn’t go undamaged. He may not have been touched, but the sheer force of the blow was enough to send him tumbling to the earth below.

Unfortunately, Onox took that time to shoot down to where Zelda was, scooping up her crystal in one of massive claws and taking off to who knows where with a roar of triumph – for he wasn’t about to retreat to his cave, which was much too near.

Vaati, slightly disorientated from his less than gentle landing, struggled to rise without promptly stumbling down. By the time the dizziness had worn off, the dragon was a mere dot bobbing in the distance. Snarling, he had been about to take off and follow suit…

When the floor beneath him began to shake. Statrled, he quickly stepped to the side, only to see the irritating creature from before pop up from the ground.

“Whoa…” Ledd gaped, looking around at the burnt field and what remained of the half dead forest. He then caught sight of Vaati, glaring at him. “Hey, dude! Where’s Zel?! Is she alright? Did that dragon get her?!”

The wind mage’s patience had all been but dried up at that point, and having this uncouth dirt dweller remind him of his failure had put the number on his patience in the negative. A simple snap of his fingers and one of his sentry eyes appeared. “Rip the hair off of his head.” Vaati snarled before taking off after the dragon.

The sentry eye then stared at Ledd, who was staring right back and not at all sure what to make of what he was seeing. But the winged eye screeched a horrible screech that sent a shudder up the Mogma’s spine, and he quickly burrowed beneath the ground and dug for his life, all the while muttering, “No, man! Not my do!”

* * *

 

Surprisingly, the team of Blue, Vio, and Poe was not as horrible as it first seemed to be. But then again, nothing particularly difficult had happened as they traversed the forest. There hadn’t been a single moblin around, and the most difficult thing they came across was a green chu – which only took one more strike to kill than a red chu… and it wasn’t like it was difficult to hit them, so it had been a pretty easy mission… so far. And Poe was rather grateful. Really, if adventuring was like this, there was nothing to be afraid of.

Blue and Poe had settled for alternating oncoming enemies. After all, both had shown that they liked to stab things about five minutes into the forest. That allowed for a sort of working relationship, as they had a sort of common ground. Vio, on the other hand, had taken up to guiding them through the forest with the map, since there seemed to be little need for bombs in this area.

So things were going pretty great… Up until they reached a clearing where they could only assume would be where the Great Fairy of the Forest normally dwelt. She wasn’t there, not that any of them expected she would be - especially Poe, who really didn’t want anything more difficult than a chu to show up. In fact, Poe was quite willing to let Blue handle the bad guy all by himself if he was so inclined.

“So where’s the baddie?” Blue asked, looking a bit irritated as he examined the clearing.

Vio was silent, simply scrutinizing the area and working up strategies for all manner of beasts that might pop up.

Poe gingerly stepped forward, half tempted to simply turn around and rejoin the puke party. But he felt himself brighten at the sight of shimmery green slime rising from the grass. Bright, cross-eyed yellow eyes caught sight of him and the green chu slowly slid towards the guard. Practically giddy at the opportunity to stab, he went and shoved his spear into the gelatinous creature two times. It splattered to the ground, and the guard let out a chuckle of delight. And then another chu popped up. Poe was about to head on over to end that one when yet another chu popped up.

And then another.

And another.

And then two more. Then three. There were far too many.

“Vio, where did all these chus come from?!” Blue asked, startled. Because Poe wasn’t the only with chu troubles.

“I have no idea,” Vio said through gritted teeth. “But they’re heading for the center and… Where’s Poe?” 

As luck would have it, Poe was in the center. And to Poe’s horror, the chus began to merge together with ugly _shloop_ ing sounds, forming an even bigger chu. Eventually, he was feeling a thick current around his ankles, and saw that puddles of chu jelly were everywhere. They were all gathering to the enlarging chu at the center, and Poe was getting caught up in it. It was then that he panicked and stabbed wildly at the chu jelly around him – because stabbing things tended to usually solve his problems. Unfortunately, the stabbing didn’t seem to be working. It was like poking pudding – utterly pointless. And even worse was that the waves of chus had reached past his knees and were _shloop_ ing so quickly together, the guard was getting caught up in the vastly growing mass of jelly.

“Oh shi-” Blue exclaimed. He ran forwards and reached out to the guard, but Vio quickly pulled him back.

“No! If you get any closer, you’ll get caught up in it too!” The purple garbed Link warned.

“But what about-” Blue was interrupted by Poe’s scream which suddenly turned into a muted and warbled thing. Sure enough, the two Links looked on in a mixture of disgust and morbid curiosity at Poe now floating within the chu. It reminded them an awful lot of the time that Zelda had invited them (or him, since they were only one person at the time) to dinner, and at dessert there was gelatin served with cut up fruit inside. Poe seemed to be the fruit in the gelatin… except he looked like he was about to break out into tears.

But their attention was drawn from the hysterical guard to the giant chu now fully formed and staring down at them. Mouths gaping, they hadn’t quite realized that the chu was rocking back and forth until it was about to slam itself down upon them. Vio shot to the left as Blue shot to the right, readying his bow. Sliding to a stop, he turned and quickly took aim at the chu and letting the arrow loose. He grinned, seeing that his aim was true (not that he really could have missed such a huge target). But the smile quickly faltered when the arrow simply _shloop_ ed inside of the chu and floated absently nearby Poe (who was feebly attempting to swim out of the chu).

“What?!” Blue shouted incredulously.

The chu picked itself up and slowly began to slide over closer towards Blue, who tried to shoot it again with the same result.

“It’s too big!” He heard Vio call out from the left. “You can’t hit the core like that; arrows are too weak!”

Blue looked at Vio with an expression of utmost shock and confusion. “These things have a _core_?!” But it was really the wrong time to be shocked about that sort of thing, because the chu slammed itself upon the ground again. Blue had only caught the movement a fraction of a second too late. He moved, but the chu jelly still caught one of his legs. The blue clad Link stumbled, desperately clawing at the ground in an attempt to escape same fate as Poe.

“Fire in the hole!” Vio shouted.

Blue’s eyes widened at that. Sure enough, a round shadow was passing over him. Vio was throwing a bomb at him. Again, Blue desperately clawed at the ground, shouting, “You fucking purple _psycho_!”

Just as the bomb was about to make contact with the chu jelly that had grasped Blue’s leg, it exploded. With a splatter of chu jelly, Blue skidded across the floor slightly blackened but otherwise fine. Happy, however, he wasn’t. “What the _fuck_ is wrong with you?! That could’ve killed me!”

Vio ignored his coarser counterpart’s words and gritted his teeth at the sight of the chu’s exploded jelly returning to it. He ran over to Blue, since the chu was still incredibly slow and said, “We need to hit the core or it’ll keep regenerating.”

“Again, these things have cores?” Blue asked, watching the chu carefully as it lumbered closer to them.

“It doesn’t matter; if we can find it, I may be able to bomb it…”

The train of thought was temporarily interrupted as the chu made to do another smash upon the ground, signaling the two Links to run before impact.

“There!” Blue shouted, pointing at a slightly more condensed area of the Chu.

“Ready!” Vio confirmed, lighting the fuses of the next bomb and hurling it at the green slime.

The two watched with anticipation as the bomb flew at the chu. Poe, seeing the bomb, looked on in horror and prayed to Farore to spare his life. And maybe Farore did hear it. Because the bomb _shloop_ ed right into the chu, and as soon as slime touched fuse, the fuse stopped burning. The giant chu easily stood itself up, and then, to the horror of the two Links, it jumped. And despite its slow movement and heavy weight, the chu managed to get enough air to send both Links running around like maniacs. When it pounded on the floor, Blue and Vio had been lucky enough not be near the gelatinous mass… but the chu’s landing caused a shock throughout the ground, sending both Link’s tumbling.

Finally at his limit, Blue snarled, “That’s it! This guy’s tasting steel!”

“ _NO_!” Vio cried out, wishing Blue wasn’t so quick to anger. But his word went in one ear and out the other with Blue. The aggressive Link took out his sword and slashed wildly at the chu. He had managed one slash without being sucked into the jelly monster. The second slash was not so lucky. His sword stuck into the monster, and no amount of pulling seemed to get the blade out. In fact, it seemed only to suck him in further. “Let go, you idiot!” Vio said.

But again, Blue did not heed the purple clad boy’s words. And soon, he was floating up near Poe and seeming angrier than ever.

Vio, now facing the giant chu alone, ran like a maniac, trying to think about how he could handle the giant gelatin creature. The arrows Blue had shot earlier were still floating around in the chu… and Blue and Poe still had their weapons nearby. The bombs couldn’t pierce through all that jelly and… He got it. Skidding to a stop, he took a deep breath and shouted at the chu, hoping the two trapped with in the slimy confines of its body could hear him, “Maneuver to the core and stab it!”

All they heard was muffled nonsense.

Vio repeated it, trying to raise his voice. Blue looked over his shoulder at Poe, who shrugged.

Desperately wanting to scream his frustration, Vio had to settle for continuing to run before the chu decided to slam down upon him. When he got further away, he stopped and then decided he may as well try his best as charades. He took out his sword and made a stabbing motion. Poe and Blue again looked at each other in confusion, getting even more confused when Vio did swimming motions. Then he did swimming motions, pointed at the chu with his blade, and then made a stabbing motion. Blue was the first to get it.

Straining with all his might, he swam over to the darkest green of the chu. Sword in hand, he thrust his blade into the core… though not very quickly. He was still in a mass of jelly, after all, so the sword had inched its way there. But the result was the same. The chu froze in pain and made eerie, hacking screeches. But that was not enough, and Blue could not pull his blade out of the core. Poe, having caught on, had begun his trek towards the core. However, his extra armor made him even slower than Link. But with a longer weapon, he was able to strike the core more quickly.

And that was what did it.

The slime fell apart like water and Poe and Blue fell to the ground with _ka-thunks_. Soaking wet in green water, the two hacked and coughed as they picked themselves up. But Poe was the first to regain his voice.

“ _I quit_.” He rasped angrily.

“What?” Vio asked, offering a hand to Blue, who struck it away and stood up by himself.

“No princess-” Poe paused to hack up a wad of green slime. The taste brought upon a horrible expression of disgust, but he continued, “-Is worth _this_.” He then began to march off, saying, “I’m going home. Tell Gibdo I said to jump off a cliff when he calls me out.”

Before Blue or Vio could say anything to stop the guard, another voice spoke, “ _Heroes, thank you for releasing me from the gelatinous prison of the Giant Chu_.”

Poe turned on his heel to see the owner of the new voice. His jaw dropped.

Before the three floated the Great Fairy of the Forest. She was tall and incredibly beautiful, with hair the color of fresh grass roots tumbling down a dress of deepest green. Shimmery dragonfly-like wings flapped gently on her back… and Poe was incredibly red in the face and all of a sudden very self-conscious.

“ _Had you not come to my rescue, I surely would have been trapped within that monster indefinitely._ ”

“Oh-oh, it was nothing,” Poe said, his chest puffing out and standing more at the ready than most guards the Links had seen since they were whole. “You know, us guards of Hyrule… doing our best to protect everyone around.”

The Great Fairy smiled, her eyes shining brightly. “ _What a noble hero. As thanks, allow me to open the first gate to the Demon Vaati’s palace_.”

Poe blinked for a moment, before the slightest bit of dismay came upon his expression. “Oh yeah… that’s still going on…”

“ _Heroes, I ask of you to release my sisters. They are still in grave danger. May the goddesses continue to shine light upon your quest._ ” And then the Great Fairy vanished.

The three stood stock still. And then Poe began to march out of the forest crying out, “Well, what are we waiting for! There are incredibly beautiful fairies save! I mean… there’s a princess to save by… by saving incredibly beautiful fairies… We have to go.”

Blue simply snorted. “Please, with a _fairy_? He hasn’t got a chance in hell.”

Vio shook his head disapprovingly… yet he had a very similar smile upon his face. 


	5. Act 5

Vaati had been following the trace he’d had on Zelda like a madman… of course, many did question whether or not he was in fact mad (personally, he didn’t like to think so, but realized full well if he was he probably wouldn’t admit it and so chose not to think about it). And he was mad in the sense of being incredibly upset. He had been flying non-stop for hours and the sky was darkening significantly. But he knew he was getting close. He wasn’t the only one expending his energy flying such a long distance – long enough so that he was well aware they’d left Hyrule ages ago. While he wasn’t sure where he was exactly, he’d have to guess it was Holodrum. But in the end, it didn’t matter. Anytime, anywhere, he would take on that dragon. And as he grasped the strand of dirty, red blond hair tightly in his fist, he couldn’t wait to skin the beast.

And then he hit a brick wall.

Or at least that’s what it _felt_ like. He didn’t actually hit a wall at all, but the sudden severance of his trace upon his bride-to-be was quite enough to make him come to a dead stop midair. While dispelling a trace was possible, the ways in which it was done varied. The most common ones were that the practitioner behind the trace had dispelled it his or herself; whatever the practitioner was using to trace the subject had been discarded by the subject; or the subject died.

 _... I will be very cross if she is dead._ The wind mage growled in his mind. He doubted she was. While he wasn’t entirely familiar with dragon magic, he knew that their brand of magic was timely, in a sense. Most of their magic was heavily dependent on ceremony and monthly cycles – and to make things even more complicated, it had to be at a particular time, such as twilight or dawn, noon or midnight and the fashion. It had been past twilight for around half an hour, too late for a twilight ceremony… Zelda was likely still alive, then… unless Onox was preparing for a midnight ritual.

The wind mage gritted his teeth. It would be very bad if that was the case, seeing as the dragon had cloaked wherever he was hiding – something dragons could do without ceremony. And he was rather at a loss at what to do. The girl had proven herself resourceful and resilient… he could always release her from the crystal… but if Onox was around, the crystal was probably the only thing preventing the dragon from eating her. Cooking her was another matter entirely… But he couldn’t risk Onox seeing the crystal dispelled – if he did plan on eating Zelda that night…

He was gritting his teeth and getting ready to lash out at the nearest object when he felt the air shake. With an expression much like that of a deer with an arrow pointed right at it, Vaati froze. The dragon was near. It was either coming for him or was going out of its own accord. Was he still carrying Zelda? He flew down towards the ground, hiding himself in a canopy of nearby trees and blinding the senses to his presence. The dragon quickly soon flew over and the wind mage focused intently upon the great beast. No sign of Zelda… So she wasn’t with him.

He attempted the tracking spell again.

No luck. Wherever she was, it was the place that Onox had shielded. But the dragon was no longer there. _Don’t get caught, girl._ He growled in his head.

* * *

 

Zelda had given up screaming and shouting and kicking and flailing. Despite that, her throat felt raw from all the screaming she had been doing, though they weren’t screams of fear more than they were anger. Not that it did much. Vaati’s glass prison was still as tough as ever, and Onox seemed to have been deaf to her shouts. So she did her best to make herself comfortable in her cramped crystal prison, crossing her arms and throwing a deathly glare at the dragon’s massive head in hopes he would see it.

But with all the bobbing up and down of the flight, Zelda had a difficult time keeping her hate filled gaze on the dragon. After a while, she settled for looking around, noticing that she did not recognize any of the land that they were flying over and scolded herself for not paying attention to the flight. Her stomach then knotted up at the realization that they were probably flying over a land that wasn’t Hyrule at all – and that also meant that Vaati would have to be the one to save her seeing as Link had no idea she was currently in the clutches of a dragon.

The princess then let out a sigh, as she hated to think that she finally acquiesced to the fact that Vaati was, in fact, the lesser of two evils. That didn’t mean she would at all consent to marrying him if he did rescue her, however. It was his fault she was in this situation in the first place, after all. Despite that, she bit her lip, minding the orange and red and ever darkening sky while reluctantly pleading for the mage’s arrival in her mind.

Zelda then let out a yelp, which quickly turned to a groan of pain as she fell to one side of her crystal roughly. This had already happened several times during the flight, but this time was more severe, leading the princess to believe that they had just made a sudden change in course or were descending for landing. The latter guess ended up being the correct one, for only a few moments later the dragon hovered near a cave before landing and crawling inside of it.

It was then the princess remembered just hours earlier when she had attempted to bargain with Onox. She had offered him some additions to his hoard – because his last cave certainly seemed to be lacking in any form of gold or treasures. In this cave, it was easy to understand why he’d refused. Because his hoard wasn’t “quite comfortable” as he’d said; it made the whole of Hyrule Castle look like a pig sty. The walls seemed to be coated in some form of gold, silver, bronze or valuable gem and she could make out several piles of treasure laying about in what she guessed were less traversed parts of the cave. She noted that the very back of the cave seemed to be a solid mountain’s worth of treasure, and had to wonder just how long it had taken for Onox to obtain such a horde… and how many kingdoms he’d had to steal it all from.

With that grim thought still fresh in her head, she’d barely noticed Onox had stuck the crystal upright in one of the piles of treasure. She had been brought back from her morbid musings of burned and ruined kingdoms by the dragon passing in front of her sight, seemingly looking for something within his gilded cave. Her morbid thoughts suddenly became downright terrifying as she could only envision what horrible thing the dragon was looking for. As silly as it sounded, she wondered if he was perhaps looking for a cookbook on how to make lemon-pepper princess. Visibly grimacing, she found herself looking around her glass prison again. There had to be some way out of it…

Her search was interrupted when Onox’s head suddenly looked to the mouth of the cave in alarm. The great dragon ran to the cave’s entrance, leaving Zelda wondering what on earth was wrong with the dragon? If he left, it would be fantastic, and she might yet have another chance of escaping if she could somehow find a way out of Vaati’s crystal. But the princess was dismayed to see that this was not the case. And confused. She couldn’t figure out what the dragon seemed so concentrated upon. The orange and red sky was now darkening into a dark navy, but so far as she could see there was nothing… So the dragon must have seen something she had not – and she had no doubts of it. She’d once read somewhere that a dragon had enhanced sight due to having six optic nerves per eye rather than the one human and Hylians graced with per eye. While she had no idea if it was true or not, she was willing to believe it as the dragon’s head twitched every so often as he examined the sky.

To her great alarm, Onox began to spew flames into the area. Zelda was sorely tempted to scream at the dragon and demand why he was about to kill them both until she saw that his normal white hot flames were green. It took her completely by surprise. As far as she knew, air didn’t burn green. And then a great sense of dread came upon yet her again. It was magic. The dragon was casting magic around the cave – probably to prevent detection from a nearing Vaati.

The dragon finished his spell, turning back into the cave and glancing at the princess in a disinterested manner. **“Your purple bug is persistent.”** He growled.

“The Sorcerer of Winds is a sore loser if history says anything,” Zelda said stoically. And whether it was because she was just incredibly desperate and truly believed it, she added, “He’ll find me. You’re digging your own grave.”

Had the dragon had eyebrows, she could have sworn he forked one. His massive head lowered down to her crystal, in a way that almost had the beat face to face with her. **“Oh? And why is that?”** It was a mocking tone; an obviously rhetorical question. In fact, she was quite willing to bet the question was a challenge. He was daring her to answer.

Perhaps the smart thing to would have been to not answer at all and leave the dragon to his own designs. In fact, the smart thing to do would have been to just sit, be quiet, look pretty, and wait to be rescued – the family tradition at its finest. But Zelda’s level of tolerance was at an all time low, and she was willing to take up the beast’s dare. In the haughtiest tone of voice she could manage, she said, “Because Vaati is a sorcerer of legend, one of the most powerful and feared beings to man and monster. And you don’t gain a reputation like that without reason.”

Onox merely stared with what Zelda had at first thought was her desired reaction, that being of some degree of outrage. However, the longer the dragon’s gaze lingered upon her, the more she realized that Onox didn’t seem at all perturbed by her words… in fact, if she had to identify the reptilian beast’s expression, it would have to be curiosity. She gritted her teeth, and then scowled with outrage when she recognized the dragon’s gravelly laugh before he turned around and resumed his earlier search. Again, she wanted to scream, and was sorely tempted to smash her head against the crystal wall before her repeatedly until she blacked out.

Could this day possibly get any-

She didn’t finish the thought. That would tempt fate far too much.

Apparently fate didn’t need her to finish the thought. Onox seemed to find what he was looking for fairly quickly after the unfinished question flew through her mind. She had no idea what it was he’d found, but she knew he’d found it. He had stopped his digging and let out a pleased little thrum from the back of his throat – much like a friendly bird would to a person.

 _Oh Vaati…_ she thought hopelessly, _Whatever that dragon did outside, I hope you can get past it..._ She thought desperately, trying to forget that she really shouldn’t even be rooting for the sorcerer. And as if to crush her efforts of trying to hope for survival, the dragon blew a lick of flame at whatever it was he had found. Red light flashed brilliantly within the cavern, and the light condensed, leaving only rope-like squiggles in the air. So shocked was she by the sight of the flaming red squiggles, she hadn’t realized the interest Onox had taken in looking at the squiggles himself. And when she did, she realized he was _reading_ the squiggles. It was some sort of foreign language then… and in it held the instructions to her doom.

Desperately, she tried to turn the squiggly flaming lines into letters she could understand, but to no avail. Nothing she could come up with made any sort of sense, and really she knew it was desperation that drove her to it.

Zelda turned her attention from the squiggles back to her crystal prison, looking for any sign of weakness. She’d done it many times before, but she just had to keep trying… If not…

 **“Looks like you have a little time yet,”** she heard the dragon purr (though it had sounded more like a menacing growl, she found it was actually a purr since there seemed to be more amusement and less menace than initially thought). Purr or no, it still sent a violent shake up her spine. She was absolutely positive all the blood had drained from her face before she finally faced the beast, who had a massive gleaming crimson eye upon her. **“Two days little princess. Enjoy them while you can.”** He then laughed a literal roaring laugh, which was terribly unpleasant upon the princess’s ears, before taking off out of the cave to who knows where.

And watching the dragon take off again, she felt even more helpless than before. Because Onox had done some sort of shield or cloaking upon his cave – Vaati wouldn’t likely find it…

She was incredibly ready to break down and cry, and she was just about to do so when the crystal walls around her vanished. Since her feet had been upon a glass floor, she lost her balance and quickly fell over onto the pile of treasure that Onox had stuck the crystal in. She growled something unpleasant and crawled her way down the pile of gold coins, as attempting to stand would probably result in her slipping all over the place again.

It was only after she was on solid ground did it hit her that she had been released from the crystal. Vaati had released her… She didn’t dwell on it. Now was not the time to think too hard about these things, she had to escape!

… But before that, she really needed to do something else that had bee bothering her immensely, and it wasn’t exactly something she could do in the confined space of the crystal. Zelda made a beeline for the mouth of the cave and then stopped. She smirked and trotted over to a particularly tall pile of gold… she adjusted her skirts and squatted, then let nature take its course.

Satisfied in more ways than one, Zelda stood and straightened out her skirts (as much as she could anyways) and then left the cave with pride. But then her satisfaction quickly died, because she had no idea where to go. From the looks of it, the cave was at the foot of a mountain in the middle of nowhere. Or more accurately, there were plenty of places to go but she would get hopelessly lost. But then she scolded herself for losing her resolve so quickly! She stepped forward, because anywhere that was away from Onox was an excellent place to be.

Yet as she walked, she shivered. She came to the realization that the crystal had been protecting her from the cooling temperatures of the night… and while that was great inside the crystal, it wasn’t great for travelling in a torn and tattered dress… especially when one realized how incredibly tired they were. Zelda, however, did not stop until the cave was well out of sight, and when she did she had retreated under a tree. She considered finding some abandoned branches and making a fire, but realized that might have given her away to Onox… Crouching down, she hugged herself tightly and rubbed the bare bits of her skin that were breaking out into chilled gooseflesh. How she wished to be find something warm!

… And then her memory flashed back to just earlier that day. Vaati had held her… granted, forcefully, but… he’d been warm. Perhaps it was the paleness of his skin or the horrible reputation, but she’d always imagined him to be cold. In fact, it’d be easier to say she had always imagined him as a sort of cold-blooded reptile. Instead, he’d proved himself a warm blooded mammal, like the rest of the humanoid races (excepting maybe the Zora). And at the moment, she rather wished he could be there, holding her… _But not for any romantic reasons!_ She told herself quickly, perhaps a bit too quickly. And she realized that. No matter how she tried to rationalize her reasons - she was cold and needed warmth, he was the best of a bad situation, etc – she couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe he wasn’t at all so bad…

 _Oh Zelda you delirious fool!_ She chided herself, _Don’t be so stupid! He’s a villain too, remember! You’re only getting this wishy washy because you’re sleepy!_ But she didn’t dare go to sleep. Onox could find her at any moment… but her lids were getting heavy, even as she began to shiver violently in the night air. But she still did her best to keep her eyes open… and that made things rather surreal. She was positive she was hallucinating at some point in the night… Heck, Zelda even imagined that she saw Vaati flying down towards her. The slight breeze that always seemed to be around him was even there in that figment of her imagination.

“There you are, princess,” he had said, sounding somewhere in between relieved and annoyed. “You seem a bit worse for wear… Come now, we have to get going before the bloody dragon find us.” She wanted to snap at him; say something just as rude back… but anything that came out of her mouth was slurred and indistinguishable to the point where even she wasn’t sure what she was trying to say. “Good gods, you’re slurring…” she heard the hallucination grumble irritably. “I suppose I can’t blame you – a willful girl like you can’t possibly have been having a very good day.”

 _That’s the understatement of the century,_ she wished could have yelled. What an incredibly rude hallucination. Almost like the real thing, really. But perhaps her glare was clear enough to this figment of her imagination, as he seemed to be giving her this impatient sort of look. Her glare suddenly broke when a violent shiver coursed through her body and she gripped herself even tighter. No time to be getting so worked up over something that was all in her head, not when she was so cold.

And that was when she realized the hallucination was not a fake.

Vaati plopped down next to her and with an impatient sigh, grabbed her and held her tight. However, Zelda hadn’t quite realized what had happened, and was instead reveling in the warmth. It was almost like paradise… That was until her mind was clear enough with the new found rise in temperature to realize that she had practically buried herself into Vaati. Horrified, she was nearly about scream shrilly and slap the wind mage for the audacity of doing such a thing – no matter how well intentioned it was. But she stopped herself when she heard the smallest of snores. She shifted herself a bit to get a glimpse of the mage’s pale face… He was asleep. And perhaps it was the falsely innocent look on his face while he slumbered, or perhaps her own desire for sleep overcoming her, that she thought, _I suppose he’s had a rough day too…Getting hit by a dragon’s tail twice…_

Soon after that thought, she fell into a dreamless sleep.

They both awoke late in the morning when the shade had left the tree they had used as shelter. Both somewhat confused as they came to consciousness, the memories quickly caught up. Vaati gave the girl an almost triumphant satisfied look, even as she gave him a horrified expression before pushing herself off and brushing herself down aggressively. She didn’t really care if he’d kept her warm during the night, or had come for her and was willing to fight for her… Zelda was not at all happy to have been touching him in any way, shape, or form.

“No ‘thank yous,’ Princess?” He teased.

The princess gritted here teeth before saying a very strained, “Thank you, Vaati.”

“For?”

She turned on her heel and gave him the deathliest of glares, only to see he was just grinning expectantly at her. She knew exactly what he wanted to hear… and she would not give it. “Thank you for trapping me in a crystal that only made it easier for a fire breathing lizard to kidnap me!”

The satisfied look that Vaati had moments ago turned to ice. “What an incredibly ungrateful thing to say, after all I’ve done for you.”

Zelda was flabbergasted. “After all _you’ve_ done for _me_? You kidnapped me to force me into marrying you; and then you get a dragon angry enough to kidnap me from you out of spite, and then he decides he wants to eat me! What is there to be grateful for, exactly?!” She exploded.

He rolled his eyes, but for all his show of calm impatience, she could sense the anger emanating from him. “Leave it to a woman to remember the awful things; never mind I’ve fought this dragon twice for your sake and saved you from roasting and freezing. Not to mention conveniently forget that I have no intentions on killing you – though your green friend and his cohort clones are a different matter entirely.”

Red in the face, she found herself in a situation that was eerily similar to the one on the Palace of Winds before Onox had arrived. It was so similar, in fact, that when she went to slap him, they both felt the harsh vibrations of wings in the air.

“Shit,” she heard Vaati growl under his breath. She pretended not to notice the alarm in his voice. With a scowl, the mage looked to her and then said, “Apologize.”

She was confused at first, until she realized he was referring to the conversation the dragon had just interrupted. “What? I will do no such thing, now get us out of here!”

With a sneer, Vaati said, “Apologize to me, or apologize to the beast once he gets here for running away.”

It had to have been a record to see the girl pale and then redden so quickly. “This is the worst possible time to be acting like a _child_!”

“We’re not moving a muscle until I hear a proper apology.” The wind mage repeated.

“Do _not_ be that guy right now!” She screeched.

“Oh, I am going to be that guy. Now apologize. And if I were you, I’d hurry up; I have no doubts the infernal lizard has heard your little outburst.” He said carelessly.

Oh how she _hated_ this man! How she ever thought he was bearable was beyond her! Worst of all, she knew he was steadfast in his desire to hear that damned apology, just like a little spoiled brat! They really were not going to move until… She resisted the urge to scream, and instead half shouted, “Fine! I’m sorry! I take it back, thank you for going through all this trouble for me and for being such a _perfect gentleman_!”

“Sarcasm is unbecoming, dear.” Vaati said sweetly.

Zelda was so incredibly sure there was some sort of aneurism brewing somewhere in her brain. Through clenched teeth, she barely managed a simple, “I’m sorry.” The wing beats were obviously getting closer, and she hoped it would suffice… Vaati simply seemed to be mulling over the short two word statement before saying in a pseudo-defeated manner, “Oh, I suppose that’ll have to do for now.”

Quicker than she had expected, the mage scooped her up bridal style and then took off. Not at all having been ready, she squealed and ended up holding onto the mage for dear life and shut her eyes tightly. For some reason, flying this way seemed to be even more terrifying than being trapped in claws – mostly because the claws had her all enclosed, while as here she felt the wind pushing against her very skin. When she dared open her eyes again, she saw that while they were flying, they were still close to the ground.

Unfortunately, she also saw that Onox wasn’t too far off and was getting closer with each beat of his massive wings. “V-Vaati,” she squeaked.

“I know,” he growled. “I’m flying as fast as I can.”

Part of her wanted to demand that he fly even faster, but she knew that wouldn’t help. Rather than stare at the dragon, she turned to the direction they were facing and certainly hoped that Vaati knew where he was going. And then Zelda saw a flash of light from her peripheral vision. She looked back and guffawed, “He’s throwing fire balls at us!”

“ _I know_!” The mage snapped angrily, trying to pick up his speed more. It worked, and a sudden jolt of speed had them further ahead than the dragon. But the dragon just put his wings to harder work, flames pouring out of his mouth towards them. Vaati ignored the foul cusses his lady was spewing at the dragon, and he tried his best to ignore her very constraining grip on him. They had to fly – he could not fight the dragon now. Yet he could not think of where to go – Onox had proven himself quite capable of matching his own flight speed.

And that’s when it happened. The dragon sent another stream of flame their way. Zelda screeched, seeing the heat of blue flames come right at them. Wait…? Blue flames?

Before she could register the meaning, the flames hit them. Rather than burning them to the bone, both mage and princess were awash in feelings of cold and grogginess. Of course, that quickly turned to pain as they both crashed into the field below them. Grass flying upwards in their wake, they rolled on their backs feeling confused and disorientated. But quickly remembering what was going on, Vaati was back on his feet eyeing the dragon who now circling above them. He jumped to fly up and confront the beast… but he fell back down. It was so unexpected, he didn’t even land on his feet. “What?!” He exclaimed in surprise. He tried again, only to fail again (though this time he had landed on his feet). And then he remembered the blue flames. Gritting his teeth, he refused to believe and attempted to blow an updraft right into the dragon. He stepped forward, raising his arms to cast the spell… and absolutely nothing happened.

He had been jinxed.

“Shit… Zelda! Quickly, get up! _Get up_ , girl!” Vaati hissed, pulling the still groggy girl up to her feet. “We need to run – we need to run _now_ , we’ve been jinxed.” Not that running would do them much good. He could already feel the dragon’s wingbeats getting closer; Onox was preparing to land.

“Wha- jinxed? Huh?” Zelda, it seemed, was one of the types that suffered confusion as a side-effect of jinxing.

“Dammit!” He cursed, scooping the girl up and running as fast he could – which wasn’t very fast. Being a mage, he wasn’t used to such physical exertion and was tiring easily. To make matters worse, Onox had landed. The vibration from the air settling around them and the shaking of the ground told him that. He stumbled, twisting his body so that he took the brunt of the fall rather than the princess. “ _SHIT!_ ” Vaati cursed. To lose like this – it was unbearable!

And then he felt the ground sinking beneath them. Before the mage could scramble up with the girl, the ground completely gave way. It was both a blessing and a curse, he figured, as they fell into the darkness of who knew where. It was a blessing because he could hear Onox howling in rage at their escape; a curse because Vaati hated the underground with a passion.

* * *

 

By the time Blue, Vio, and Poe had returned to what Blue dubbed “camp Throw up,” Gibdo, Red, and Link seemed to have shifted the camp a little and were sound asleep. For the most part, the night passed uneventfully, though Poe had taken to badly humming a tune. When morning came, it seemed that most of the poison ivy had left the systems of the three tea drinkers and they resumed their journey, heading towards the next location of a Great Fairy – Death Mountain.

Poe led the way in almost a skip, which immediately told his older brother that something was very wrong with the universe. Concerned, Gibdo asked his brother, who blushed and told him to shut his face and mind his own damned business before resuming his reverie. So instead Gibdo went to Blue, who smirked and said, “Your brother has a thing for Great Fairies – seriously, the guy went head over heels when he saw the Great Dragonfly Fairy.”

Though Gibdo did notice from the side that the normally calm Vio seemed to have a slight blush on his face as Blue spoke. The guardsman didn’t think much of it, however. He was still far too shocked with the idea of his brother being so enamored with a fairy; it might not have spelled anything good really… A grim thought entered the elder brother’s mind as he began to think if this might be Ghini all over again, except with worse consequences. He’d heard the stories, all right, about how Great Fairies would take the occasional human in for a lover and how said lovers were never seen or heard from again. At first Gibdo didn’t believe th stories, but he didn’t believe the stories about Vaati and look where that put him now! _My poor brother!_ Thought Gibdo, _He’s been trapped in the spell of the fairies!_

And these thoughts continued to plague him as they entered Death Mountain Pass. Well, that was until Link stopped them.

“Hey, what’s the hold up?” Blue asked impatiently of his green counterpart.

Link remained silent for a moment before concluding, “Something’s not right. Ever since we got here, we haven’t seen a sign of life. We haven’t seen one tektike. Don’t you think that’s a little strange?” What Link found most strange, actually, was that the normally ever so logical Vio didn’t see it first.

“Well that’s good!” Red piped up happily. “That means things should be easier right?”

Vio seemed to come back to himself then. “No… Vaati wouldn’t be so careless as to leave this place unguarded… there’s something here.”

“I’ll take it on!” Poe said, stepping up with spear at the ready. “I will take on anything to save the Great Fairy! … I mean, the princess…” The last part came out with much less gusto than his previous statement, enough so that the group saw through it easily. It didn’t really ruffle anyone’s feathers but Gibdo.

The group, however, remained quiet. The Links pensive, Gibdo fretting over his brother, and Poe ready to stab the nearest thing for the love of a Great Fairy. And then they heard it.

A piercing shriek rang through the Pass, causing the boys to cover their ears with their hands. A shadow flew over them and then landed in front of their path. The great helmed bird spread its wings out in threat display and shrieked at them. Poe shrieked right and charged madly at it. The Helmaroc King slapped the guardsman away with a wing as if it was swatting a fly, and for all intents and purposes he was. Worst of all, there wasn’t exactly any place the group could hide. Death Mountain pass was wide and, aside from the uphill incline, flat.

“Blue, aim for the eyes!” Vio said.

“Already on it, Smarts,” Blue said, aiming for the great bird’s gleaming eyes behind the helmet.

“Red, try to get on its back!” Vio ordered. Red nodded and threw on his cape, rushing towards the bird and using the cape’s magically ability to hop onto the bird.

The Helmaroc King let out a mad screech as an arrow bounced off its helm and Red managed to hop onto its back. In an attempt to shake off Red, it took the air, but the Red Link held onto the feathers of the bird until he landed again. At this point in time, Link, Vio and Gibdo had their weapons out and ready for the bird. Even Poe was scrambling up, trying to get in on the action. Wings spread out again in threat display, the bird screeched again, only this time it’s screech went something like, “ _Screeeaaaaa-I give up._ ”

Everyone stopped what they were doing. In fact, Red didn’t even object when the bird reached its head over to its back and plucked the Link off before gently setting him down.

“Wait, wait… you’re just giving up?!” Blue sounded outraged.

The great roc fluffed up its feathers indignantly. “ _As a matter of fact I am, and I have every right to. I’m supposed to be on vacation you know._ ”

“What do giant birds have to go on vacation for?” Poe asked, sounded just as frustrated as Blue.

The Helmaroc King rolled its eyes. “ _You sound just like Lord Vaati. As a matter of fact, even giant monsters need a break every now again. When we aren’t terrorizing the populace, they terrorize us. Forgive me if I’d like a break from all…_ ” The bird waved its wings around, as if it was using them to gesture at its surroundings, _“-this._ _Besides, perhaps this will show Lord Vaati not to interrupt my holidays in the future._ ”

“B-but – you’re disobeying his orders!” Poe said, aghast. He couldn’t believe one of Vaati’s underlings was actually doing such a thing. If he were an underling to the most powerful mage in the world, he would never do any such thing!

“ _Hah! Orders from Vaati… I don’t_ need _to take orders from him. He is not my master._ ” The Bird said as it puffed out its chest feathers proudly. “ _Besides, it’s not like he would find out – he’s not even_ in _Hyrule. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a great deal of preening to do at Lake Hylia._ ”

“Wait!” Link started forward. He became very alert at the bird’s “not even in Hyrule” comment, and was terrified as to what that could mean for Zelda. But if the bird heard him, it did not acknowledge him. With a great flap of its wings it was off, ignoring the green clad figure crying out for it to stop.

Eventually, Link stopped, though his eyes still chased the Helmaroc King’s silhouette as it flew off. How could the bird just drop a phrase like that and just leave? Frustrated, he hadn’t even noticed the presence of the rest of his group as he shouted, “What did mean not in Hyrule?!”

“Well, the Palace technically isn’t in Hyrule. It’s in the sky,” Blue pointed out.

“But wouldn’t Vaati still know about the Helmaroc not fighting us?” Red asked, “I mean, even if he’s not technically in Hyrule, if he’s floating above it he’d probably know what’s going on right?”

“That’s true…” Vio agreed with a nod. “I think Green is right. Vaati may not be around-”

“Where do you think you’re going?!” Gibdo cried out as he noted his brother running ahead on Death Mountain Pass.

“Psh, you guys can talk about it all you want, _I’m_ going to find a Great Fairy!” Poe said matter-of-factly.

“H-hey!” Vio called out, seeming somewhat flustered. “Wait!” He ran ahead as well, with Red, Blue and Gibdo (who shouting at his brother to stop) followed suit.

But Link had not so easily forgotten the bird’s words. If Vaati wasn’t in Hyrule… then what did that mean for Zelda?


	6. Act 6

It was a particularly rough landing. The ground beneath them was comprised of scratchy dirt and rocks… and Zelda had also landed on Vaati. Granted, the mage went through efforts as they fell to make this so, that didn’t mean it was enjoyable. Far from it actually.

“Ooof… what happened…?” Came Zelda’s groggy voice.

“We fell through a hole.” Vaati said flatly, debating whether it was in his best interests to get up and feel a world of pain, or stay down and feel less pain.

Zelda’s simple response was, “Huh?” In looking for the source of the voice, she ended up kneeing Vaati in the stomach. His muted cry of pain was what caught her attention below her. “Wha…?”

With a groan, Vaati sat up and gently pushed her off of him. Right now, they… well, maybe not they, but he needed to get his bearings before the dragon found a way to reach them. Not to mention it was certainly in Vaati’s best interest to get out of this place – he could feel the air was stagnant and stifled… not a place for a Mage of _Winds_. Not that it mattered much. He was still jinxed. But before he could really take anything in, he felt Zelda softly embrace him from behind, whispering in a silly giggle, “You’re cute.”

Gingerly, he unclasped her hands from himself and said, “Flattering, my dear, but this really isn’t the time.”

“Oooh, but why _not_?” She whined. Vaati just looked over his shoulder at her, seeing a pouty face on that confusion clouded head of hers. He never quite realized how unbecoming whining was on her. Irritably, he responded, “Because I say so.”

With that, he stood up and brushed himself off, again trying to take in his surroundings. But he was not at all pleased with what he was seeing. Rocks, ledges and, the coup de grace, magma. Lots and lots of magma pools just about everywhere. It certainly explained why it was so warm down here. “Fan _tas_ tic.” Vaati muttered under his breath. It seemed they had no choice but to wait until the Jinx wore off...

“Well, Princess it seems… where did you get that?” He asked, taking note of the large pink bow the princess was trying to arrange on her nose.

“Ummmm, I don’t know.” She said with a furrowed brow as she looked at the bow in her hands.

“Well put it down, you don’t know where it’s been.” He snapped.

“You’re… you’re… oooh, I can’t… you’re mean!” The girl said in triumph upon finding her word.

“This has been established already, Princess.” Vaati said tiredly.

“Established what?”

He didn’t even respond to it. At least he would know the jinx was done with when Zelda started making sense again.

“Oh, that’s _my_ bow!” A squeaky voice then said.

Puzzled, he turned his attention back down towards Zelda only to see that the girl was now not alone. While Zelda was protectively clutching the bow she’d found, there was now something else there. Some sort of creature in a red, hooded robe. He could only assume it was female, but the huge, yellow eyes on the thing covered about three quarters of its face, making it very difficult to tell. He was distracted by the oddity, it took him a few moments to realize that the creature and Zelda were having a tug-of-war over the pink bow.

“Nooooo, I found it!” Zelda whined in that very unbecoming way. It was enough for Vaati to get in between them and yank the bow from both their hands before handing it to the red robed figure. “Noooooooo!” Zelda whined, balled fists weakly pummeling Vaati’s back.

“Please excuse her, she’s not normally like this.” Vaati apologized, though in truth his temper was at a rolling boil and he wished he just could have thrown the bow into the magma nearby. However, he had the distinct feeling doing such a thing would not work in his favor. 

The thing in the red robes cast it giant yellow eyes on Vaati suspiciously, then on Zelda… and then went about placing its large bow on its hood. “It’s fine I suppose…” She said warily in her squeaky voice. “But you two don’t look like Subrosians; what are you doing here? Did you fall down here during that landslide?”

 _Landslide?_ _I suppose they wouldn’t know there was a dragon stomping about top side. It would probably be best not to mention it either._ “You could say that… You wouldn’t happen to know how to get back up to the surface, would you?” 

“I don’t know… it looks like that hole you two fell from got sealed up. Some of the other ways outside might’ve sealed up too…”

And then there was a shaking in the ground followed by dirt tumbling down from above. Vaati grimaced. Onox was probably digging… He looked back to the bulbous eyed girl and said, “My fiancée and I really need to leave the general area – at the moment, we’ll take any way out of here.” And that was true. He was already hating this heat; he was hating the stagnant air; and he certainly hated to think what would happen if Onox dug them up here and now while he and Zelda were still jinxed.

The Subrosian girl gave Vaati and Zelda (who was currently looking absently around in a daze) a wary look. Honestly, she wasn’t quite sure she liked either one of these strange looking Hylians. The girl was as dumb as a post, and that was insulting the post. And the man, while having been perfectly polite, seemed to have an aura of menace around him. Like… like he was only being polite because all other options seemed to be avoiding him. And then it occurred to her if that was the case, did she really not want to help a guy like that? It seemed like the best option would be to get the out of Subrosia lest he did find another option. “I guess I can help you two… But…”

Vaati forked an eyebrow. “But?”

“Never mind,” Rosa said, shaking that overlarge head of hers dismissively before going on, “I can’t take you there myself, but I can tell you where to go. The landslides have covered up a lot of places I’m sure, but I know one that isn’t going to collapse anytime soon.”

“And that is…?” His voice was thick with impatience. He did not like the underground, and he disliked the volcanic atmosphere even less. He was already feeling his hair stick to his face unpleasantly.

“Hold on,” Rosa said, looking around for something. When she found it, she scurried ahead, telling Vaati and Zelda to follow. The mage took the confused princess by the arm and followed, ignoring Zelda’s feeble, “Heeeeey, noooooooooo… I dun wanna… I dunno.” He caught up with the Subrosian on the top of a hill. The sleeve of the girl’s cloak was outstretched and pointing downwards, towards a sheet of rock that seemed to end the underworld land of Subrosia. “In that wall there’s a small fissure. It has some carvings around it, so it should be easy to find. If you go through it, you can find a way back to the surface.”

“A fissure?” Was all Vaati managed to say skeptically. Rosa was holding information back, no doubt. Walking into random cracks in the wall to who knows where… it reeked of suspicion.

“I admit it isn’t the safest thing in the world but it’ll get you out.” The Subrosion girl stated matter-of-factly, crossing her cloaked arms.

He was still highly suspicion, but the earth shook again, and Vaati knew there was no time to be picky. He hated the idea of going into a fissure – surrounded by rock and all sides in limited spaces with a stupefied Zelda… But again, a lack of options forced him to put on a pleasant expression and say to Rose, “Thank you for your assistance. We’ll be on our way now.” _And I’ll be sure to cave in this stupid place once I have my abilities back._

Rosa shrugged, “Good luck, I suppose.” And then shuffled off, leaving Zelda and Vaati upon the hilltop.

Vaati stared down at the wall, his bad mood strengthening in the uncomfortable environment. It was especially not helping with Zelda humming an annoying tune right near him. _Stop. Stop it. You’re getting angry again. Don’t get angry again. You do stupid things when you get angry._ He thought to himself. But if anything, those thoughts were still getting him upset. Apparently, he couldn’t take criticism even from himself. Deciding it was better to perhaps not think about it too much, he took Zelda’s hand and guided them downwards toward the wall so that they could find the fissure.

Zelda had at first been as loopy as she had been since they’d first arrived, and the only way Vaati managed to keep a lid on his temper was to convince her to play one of Ezlo’s favorite games: The Quiet Game. Unfortunately, the game did not last long. As soon as they made it to the wall, Zelda had forgotten the about the “game.”

“Where _are_ we? Where are we _going_? Who are _you_? Who am _I_? Why is it so _hot_ here?”

Worst of all, she was blathering on in a nasally, high pitched voice that made him seriously consider gagging her. Silently, he tried to gag her via magic, but he supposed if he had access to his magic, Zelda wouldn’t be acting like an idiot. In his mind, he began a sort of mantra of _Patience… patience…_ And to his great surprise it helped in tuning Zelda out as he searched for the fissure.

And when he found it, he grimaced. It was small, as Rosa had said. It was single-file only space wise, and short enough so that he and the princess would have squat down to get through. He already felt uncomfortable just peeking through the space. His natural element being wind, he didn’t have a very good time in enclosed spaces. But they couldn’t stay put – the earth still shook with the vibrations of dragon claws scraping against it. It wouldn’t be long before the dragon broke through.

“Princess, come here – yes, _you_.” He said exasperatedly to the confused girl. “Crawl through this-”

“Why?”

“Never mind why, just do it!” He snapped. She probably couldn’t understand, in her current state, that it would be a very bad idea to have her absent minded self attempt to follow him down a thin, dark tunnel.

The girl pouted, but then quickly dazed again. Rather than try to convince her yet again, he quickly prodded her into the fissure. With a yelp, she proceeded forward, if not hesitantly and confusedly. Zelda again began on a chorus of whiny questions ad Vaati continued his mantra of “patience” within his mind. And luckily, as he’d hoped, the cramped space did not last for long. Zelda stumbled ahead and he’d seen that she was now standing upright within a small cavern. He entered the little cavern himself and looked around, ignoring Zelda’s fascinated “oooooooh” in favor of the most unexpected sight in this small cavern. Which was a door. And not just any door – an old stone door with intricate engravings. And he knew exactly why Rosa had been so sure this place wouldn’t be caved in and why she had been so hesitant to take them there.

“A monster’s den. _Perfect_.” He scowled.

“Preeeetty!” Zelda piped up right next to him, pointing at the engravings of the stone door that foretold danger. There was no apparent means of opening it but… well, having opened a few of these in the past, he knew there was a way. There was always a way to open these things. Why, he really had no idea. These things were obviously meant to keep things in, so why would anyone put a failsafe that would let the things out? The wind mage supposed he shouldn’t be in a position to complain, however, as those idiotic mistakes worked for him.

Looking at the door, he saw this was one of the more simplistic mechanisms. There was an indentation in the door deeper than the rest of the engravings. It required a key of some sort. He looked around the small cavern and frowned. The indentation wasn’t that big… which meant the key couldn’t have been that big… It had to be around somewhere, though, else Rosa wouldn’t have directed them to this-

“Princess, what are you playing with?” He’d gone back to ignoring her presence after his little chat with her, and apparently she took it upon herself to entertain herself and found something. But upon hearing Vaati, she quickly hid the object in her fist and put her hands behind her back.

“Nuthin…” She said, her dirtied, cut up toes curling inwards.

“Don’t lie to me, what is it? Show me.” He demanded.

She pouted and shook her head defiantly. The wind mage growled and then marched to her, but she attempted to run around him. The limited space worked to his advantage, though, and he had grabbed her arms and pulled her towards him. It almost seemed like when he’d first captured her and taken her to the palace, her struggling like this. Except now she was as dumb as a post, and that was insulting the post. “Stop flailing and just give me whatever it is you have!”

“NooooOOOOOO!” She shrieked, her fists still balled up protectively over the little item.

But he forcibly opened up her palms, and in one of them he managed to fish out the little item – the very key he was looking for. He wrested it from her triumphantly and shuffled quickly to the door, while Zelda stood there flabbergasted before sticking out her lower lip and getting teary eyed.

“And you were complaining about me acting childish earlier!” He scolded with a huff.

And then she began to wail.

 _PATIENCE. PATIENCE. JUST HAVE PATIENCE._ His thoughts had to practically yell his mantra at him to be heard over the girl’s shrilly crying. Looking at the item he’d taken from her, and confirmed his suspicions that she’d found the key. He tried to see that as a bright side, but her loud sobbing was grating. Because this wasn’t crying like he’d heard when he captured maidens in the past. No, this was the irritating crying of a child.

He pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers. How was he supposed to take this dimwit of a girl through a maze of monsters without getting them both killed? Especially if she kept screaming like this? He had no magic and no other means to protect their lives… Vaati glanced at Zelda, who was now stomping angrily. There weren’t even tears on her face, she was just throwing a tantrum. With an angry sigh, he took her by the shoulders and forced her to look his way. “Pay attention – what I am going to say is of the utmost importance!” 

Upon noticed her voice had been overshadowed by his, she clammed up. Her eyes screwed up a bit, and she seemed to have completely forgotten whatever it was that she had been screaming about. “Im-porrrrrr-tanssssss-ah!” She finally repeated dully.

“Quiet!” He hissed. The severity in his voice actually widened the girl’s eyes and she froze. She was _listening_. Good. “We are about to enter an extremely dangerous place. You must stay close to me and do what I say at all times until we are out of this place or your stupidity wears off. Do you get what that means? Stay close? Do you understand what I say? Do you?”

She nodded.

“Good.” He let her go and faced the door again.

 He placed the key in the indentation and pushed.

With the horrible grating sound of stone against stone, the door began to slide to the right. Vaati than glanced over his shoulder at Zelda, seeing that she still looked as vacant as ever even with the door before them moving. He honestly didn’t trust her to move by herself, even if she did seem to understand his harsh words earlier, so he took her hand and when the door finished its sliding, led her into the literal den of the beast.

It was a straightforward tunnel, its passage difficult only because of Zelda’s uneven steps. Nonetheless, the hand that wasn’t gripped around Zelda’s Vaati placed against the walls of their pathway to escape. He was trying to figure out how exactly the tunnel had been carved out, seeing as the walls seemed to be of sheet rock. From the feel of it, it seemed to have been hewn by claws rather than hammers or other technologies available to bipedal races of higher intelligence. That was not comforting, seeing as how it was probably whatever was lurking on the other side of this tunnel that had said claws. And he only wished he could hazard a guess as to what it was if only so they could properly avoid it if they had the wonderful pleasure of meeting it. And seeing as how his luck had been running lately, he was sure they would.

“It smells…” The dumbfounded Zelda whispered quietly.

He nearly snapped at her for speaking, but realized she had a valid point. The whole of Subrosia smelled – magma had a certain fire and brimstone stench to it, and the dry earth and rocks that surrounded them also had a stagnant, old smell to them. But now the odor of fire and brimstone had resurfaced strongly in this place, and Vaati wasn’t sure if his frown could get any deeper. The resurgence of the smell could mean a few things – his biggest fear being a chasm of magma they couldn’t cross or the beast living in this goddess forsaken cave being comprised of magma or some other horrible thing.

“ _Eeeeeek_!”

Zelda suddenly clung onto Vaati tightly-

“What the-?” Again, he would have snapped something unpleasant, except he was seeing what had frightened Zelda. “Dammit, Dodongos…” he cussed upon seeing a lizard-like head burrow out of the ground. Worst of all, Zelda’s squeal had attracted its attention. While the creature was very young and small, the things were irritatingly territorial even at such young ages. And where there was one, there would be several others. Gripped the princess’s hand tightly, he said to her, “Come, dear, time to run.”

Sure enough, as they ran, other baby dodongos began to crawl out of the ground behind them, wiggling their legless bodies in an attempt to catch the intruders of their cavern. Eventually, some of the dodongos gave up and burrowed under the ground, yet others still attempted the chase. However, when they reached the end of the tunnel and came upon a clearing with the occasional magma puddle, the baby dodongos vanished. Both mage and princess paused then to catch their breath.

“Wormy lizards – eeeeeew.” The still stupid Zelda whined.

“Keep quiet!” Vaati whispered harshly before going back to his own thoughts. Now that he could identify the creatures that lived within this cavern, he wasn’t sure what to make of their situation. There were definitely older dodongos around, and those were harder to get around than babies. The babies couldn’t breathe fire, after all. He scowled at the thought, _As if one fire breathing lizard after us wasn’t enough…_

To disturb that thought was the sound of a roar. It wasn’t like Onox’s roar, as it’d come from a creature significantly smaller than the great beast of a dragon. But it was still a roar large enough for Vaati to grab the princess and hide behind a boulder. He held the dumbfounded princess tightly as the sound of large, dragging claws scraping against rock grew nearer. He chanced a peak over the boulder and then quickly drew back at the sight of an adult dodongo. _Just one time – just_ one time _– why can’t things go_ my _way?_ He thought bitterly.

“What the-”

The sound of that tone of voice… Vaati couldn’t remember the last time he felt such a wave of happiness fall over him.

“Vaati, you release me this instant!” Zelda demanded.

The mage’s face cracked into a wide grin as he did the exact opposite Zelda’s demand and embraced her tighter.

“Vaati! Wha- how dare you?!” Zelda shrieked as she tried to wriggle her way out of the wind mage’s grasp.

“I have to admit, I have never found your ungrateful tone more charming than right now, at this very moment.” He said, sounding as if he were completely at peace yet still managing to keep a tight hold upon the princess. Zelda hated it, but gave up her wriggling – mostly because she’d caught the sight of a dodongo turning the corner of their hiding spot. She had no idea where they were or why there was a dodongo here, but all she could sputter was “V-V-Vaati…?”

“Hmm,” the mage vacantly looked over his shoulder. “Oh that.” He finally released the princess to face the beast, his expression back to its normal scowl. “Excuse me, can’t you see I’m having a moment here?” The dodongo began to draw breath. “Tch. Apparently not.” Before the dodongo could release its jet of flame, Vaati all too happily waved his arms out in front of him to the right where a powerful gale smashed the dodongo aside into a magma pool. The feeling of his magic coursing through him and into his element was exhilarating enough for the mage to let out a maniacal cackle, before gliding quickly over to Zelda and embracing her happily again.

“Vaati?! What on earth are you doing?! What’s going on – where _are_ we?!”

Letting her go again, the mage simply cackled once more before saying, “That’s a story for later, my dear princess. We should probably go before more of those creatures come – and honestly, I don’t know about you, but I’ve had quite enough of fire-breathing lizards.”

Zelda huffed, finding herself actually _wanting_ to make an argument about it. But Vaati was in a surprisingly good mood at the moment, for what she couldn’t even begin to guess. But she didn’t want to ruin that, seeing as the last time she had offended him he’d acted like a child. And she did have to agree with the last sentiment – she certainly was sick of fire breathing lizards.

* * *

 

“We really should move on.” Link said to the rest of the group.

Currently, the other three Links and the two guardsmen were sitting in a circle on the grass, each lazily doing their own thing.

“ _Relax_ , Green,” Blue said exasperatedly. “We’ve been at this freeing fairies thing nonstop; we deserve a break.”

“Much as I want to move on as well, Blue has a point Green,” Vio said, “If we keep going on without taking a break, we’ll be fried before we can even get to Vaati.”

“But Vaati’s not _in_ Hyrule! Didn’t you guys hear what the Helmaroc King said?!” Link said almost in a panic.

“But the Palace hasn’t moved,” Red commented chipperly, pointing at the Palace high up in the sky.

“He doesn’t need his palace to fly!” Link snapped. But his tone and expression degenerated quickly to one of worry. “He could’ve taken Zelda somewhere else… I mean, how can we save her if we don’t even know where she is…?”

Red rose and scuttled over to Link, putting a comforting hand upon his green counterpart’s shoulder. “Green, don’t think we don’t care. We do care about Zelda-”

“I don’t,” interrupted Poe, who was quickly elbowed by his brother.

“-but if we spend all of our time worrying and overworking ourselves, then we can’t save her. You, me, and Gibdo spent our first dungeon sick as dogs while Vio, Blue, and Poe handled a monster. Then we all hiked up Death Mountain and had the teeny confrontation with Mr. Helmaroc King… and then we had to hike all the way down. We’ve accomplished a lot in less than two days – it’s amazing we’re still standing.” Said the Red Link gently.

“Yeah, we’re tired!” Poe piped up again, receiving the same elbow treatment from his brother.

Link frowned. It was true. Their small group was exhausted, himself included. They did a lot of trekking, travelling, and fighting. Even Poe, who was all for saving the Great Fairies (and strangely enough, Vio as well), was reluctant to go anywhere. To push themselves any further would be suicidal – and that probably wasn’t an exaggeration. Still, the great helmed bird’s words still echoed in his head, and he said, “But what about-”

“Oh fooey what the huge bird said!” Blue cried out, agitated.

“What Blue means to say,” Vio interrupted, giving his Blue clone a look of distaste, “Is that the Helmaroc King was probably lying to confuse us. Remember whose orders he was acting on.”

 _And remember he also said he_ didn’t _take orders from Vaati either._ But at the same time, maybe Vaati told the bird to say that? Maybe this really was some ruse to throw them off…

“Besides,” Vio began again, “The next great fairy is in Lake Hylia.”

“Wait…” Gibdo thought aloud. “Isn’t the King on holiday at Lake Hylia right now?”

“Yeah…” Link groaned. They would have to find some way to avoid the king while they were there…

* * *

 

 

Zelda had to admit: she had never seen Vaati so gung-ho. Whatever had happened that brought them to this strange, way too warm, underground cave, the wind mage seemed very happy to smash any dodongo they came across into nearby lava pits. In fact, he was so happy, that when he noticed Zelda lagging, he insisted they stop. He’d even gone so far as to get them a little “snack,” and Zelda had to admit that dodongo meat had an interesting taste… But given how hungry she was, the meat, while strange, was possibly the best meal she could ever confess to having (especially in her current circumstances!).

“They could stand to use a bit more seasoning, but all in all, not bad, wouldn’t you say, Princess?” Vaati asked cheerily as he licked his fingers of dodongo scraps.

The princess, still nibbling at a piece of the meat, merely nodded politely.

The mage rolled his eyes, though he looked more amused than annoyed. “Come now, no need to be so polite. Look at where we are and our current states. No need for formality here.” He said.

Pausing, she took a moment to consider what he’d just said. There she was, her feet bloody, her dress torn and ragged, her strawberry blonde hair plastered to her face, and she didn’t even want to imagine how many layers of grime were on her. Vaati wasn’t much better, either it seemed. Absent of his cloak, his tunic and pants had several frays and cuts, the tapered tip of his hat just wasn’t there, and his own hair was sticking to his face. While he certainly did look a bit cleaner than her, it was obvious that he’d been doing a great very much in looking for her. She was kind of glad her face was already flushed from the heat, after that last thought… But then she said, “Actually, you’re right, Vaati. Formality schmormality!” And with that, she took a large bite out of her scrap of dodongo.

“That’s the spirit, dear.” Said the mage proudly.

Zelda wished she could have huffed through a full mouth, but she waited until she was done chewing before saying, “I’m not your “dear” or anything of the sort! If you must call me something other than that or Princess, then call me by my name!” And she sort of wished she’d taken it back as soon as she’d said it.

At the statement, Vaati forked an eyebrow and his lips twitched upwards a bit. “Very well then… _Zelda_.”

“It doesn’t mean anything!” She added quickly. “It’s just… we’ve been through a lot the past two days and… you’ve seen me like _this_ … and… well, we’re _there_ , I suppose! But that doesn’t mean anything! You’re still the bad guy here!”

The mage didn’t seem bothered at all by her statement, leaning back against the stone wall and twirling a lock of purple hair in his finger. “Methinks thou dost protest too much, _Zelda_. Especially considering your earlier words of… let me think for a moment, ah yes: ‘You’re cute.’ Your words, not mine.”

Again, she was very glad that her blush was in all likelihood not visible. “Tha-that’s not true!” She stuttered, even though she knew she couldn’t be sure. She had no memory of the past few hours, after all, and to say she didn’t think he was attractive would be a lie… “Alright, so maybe I do think you’re attractive,” she blurted out, “But that doesn’t mean _anything_! You kidnapped me!”

For a moment, she thought he would get angry… but instead, he smiled and shrugged. “I was only teasing, you know. But it is flattering to hear you say that when you’re in the right mind.”

That time, she was so sure her blush was audible that she buried herself in the chunk of dodongo meat in front of her. She had no idea what he was talking about, but she couldn’t believe that he’d somehow managed to get her to say that she thought he was good looking! She didn’t dare look at him, as she knew that would only further her embarrassment… yet she was also perturbed by the fact that the mage wasn’t be an utter pig about the whole thing and teasing her further.

But Vaati was relatively happy to let the girl wallow in her own awkwardness. In fact, the high he’d had from having access to his magic again was still in full effect, and he had to admit he had rather missed the snarky Zelda… and there was a sort of cuteness to the way the girl stumbled about her own words.

When Zelda had finished her meal, she acknowledged that they should probably move on, though she still made it a point not to look at Vaati directly. The mage chuckled a bit, but resumed clearing their path of any dodongos and dodongo babies. This continued on for a while, though for how long Zelda couldn’t say.

Curiosity and concern getting the best of her, she swallowed her pride and finally asked “Vaati… how long have we been down here?”

The mage paused for a moment after sending another dodongo to a fiery grave. “That’s a valid question,” he mused, “I have no idea.” There being no sunlight in Subrosia, it made telling time a pretty impossible task. Tracking time under duress was not a specialty of his. “If I had to guess… a few hours I’d say, perhaps longer…” And come to think of it, he hadn’t felt any recent vibrations in the earth. Either the dragon had moved on or they’d walked far away enough so that they couldn’t feel his prying claws in the earth. But given the size of the great beast, Vaati highly doubted it was the latter. “If we’re lucky, he’ll think us dead.”

“We’re not that lucky…” Zelda mumbled.

“No, we’re not… But we’re not staying here either. We have to move on, Princess.” The mage said, continuing forward.

“Zelda.”

The mage paused again and gave a puzzled glance over his shoulder at the girl. “Hm?”

“I said you could call me Zelda, before…” She said, suddenly feeling self-conscious. But she shook her head quickly and then went on adamantly, “Ah, never mind, let’s just go!” And as she said so, she marched briskly past Vaati, who suddenly grimaced.

“I wouldn’t advise going on-” But before he could finish, a screech pierced through the cave and a bipedal lizard wearing armor burst from a hidden alcove right in front of Zelda. The princess screeched, but the screech was cut short when she felt something swoop her around and backwards. She caught herself, not having registered that a mini tornado had just twirled her back several feet and that Vaati had raced past her to take her place before the Lizalfol, a look of utter disdain upon his visage.

The Lizalfol screeched in the mage’s face. “Your breath is horrendous.” Was all Vaati had said, his expression unchanged. The creature then swung its club downwards, and the mage merely side-stepped. “I’m having a terrible time with lizards lately. If you know what’s best for you, I’d suggest leaving now and going about your business.” The creature hissed and went to swing its club again. Since the monster asked for it, Vaati happily sent a gust of wind right into its gut strong enough to send it flying into a magma pit.

Hearing Zelda screech again, he turned on his heel quickly to see another Lizalfol closing in on the girl. _It figures_ , he thought bitterly, _Always in pairs._ He quickly sent another gale in the newest creature’s direction, using another eddy to propel him forward in front of his bride to be. The Lizalfol stumbled, hissing angrily upon seeing Vaati land with a small skid in front of Zelda. But the mage let out his own hiss, “ _Get your own princess._ ” And with that statement, he let loose a blade of air that sliced the creature fatally down the middle.

Zelda blinked absently, not quite having registered what had just happened in less than a minute.

“Are you well, Zelda?”

Her name bringing her back to reality, she looked up at the mage. “Oh… oh… yes…”

“Good,” he nodded, briskly turning on his heel and continuing forward, “Come now – and if it’s all the same to you, I think it’s better if I lead the way.”

For a moment, her temper flared. She _wanted_ to tell him that he wasn’t one to tell her what to do; she _wanted_ to bring up yet again that it was his fault they were in such a situation... But she didn’t. The words were caught in her throat, and… she gave it up, without a fight. She simply stepped forward, catching up to the mage in a puzzled silence. Maybe it was the heat or maybe it was being in a significantly better mood after having eaten recently… She didn’t know, but she managed to quietly say, “… Thank you, Vaati…”

The mage stopped dead in his tracks and looked at the girl genuinely stunned. “… Have you been Jinxed again?”

“What? Jinxed…? No!” She snapped, her temper coming back, “I can’t just say thank you because I _want_ to?”

Vaati just stared at her curiously before saying, “I suppose not… It was just unexpec-” His eyes widened and he looked down the cavern they had been walking through before Zelda had shocked him with her gratitude.

“What? What is it?” She asked, somewhat alarmed.

“Wind.”

“… Wind? You mean… a way out?”

“Yes… The exit’s near.” He said, glee coming back into a voice. Vaati looked at the princess, a smile coming upon his handsome features. He held a hand out to her, “Shall we, Zelda?”

She looked from his face to his hand… She shouldn’t. Doing so would give the mage the wrong idea… But even as she thought that, her hand made its way into his, and they were both rushing through the tunnel until they saw an opening through which light was pouring through. They both rushed out, feeling fresh air and the light of the setting sun pouring over them.

“ _Finally_!” The mage said, his voice filled with more relief than Zelda would have ever guessed she’d hear from him.

 **“Yes, finally indeed.”** A low rumble vibrated through the air. Both princess and mage spun around to see right above the cave they’d emerged from was Onox, laying over the rocky mountain the cave had been part of. With a horrible, gravelly laugh, the dragon continued, **“I was worried you’d deliver my dinner late.”**


	7. Act 7

Vaati immediately stepped in front of Zelda, expression livid. “I have had more than enough of you.” The wind mage snarled.

The dragon let out another gravelly chuckle. **“I could say the same of you, purple bug.”**

Zelda stepped back for a moment. This was not safe. Then again, the whole ordeal was not safe, but now it felt… it felt really horrible. The air was thick with hatred and anger as well as all sorts of magic that was just barely being contained… It was taking most of her willpower to keep all that nastiness from making her throw up, though she was fairly certain she was a few shades greener than was normal.

“I think it’s time we finally put a stop to this game of cat and mouse. What say you, dragon?” The mage asked, his voice dripping venom.

 **“As entertaining as the game is, I’d have to agree. After all, it isn’t long before nightfall, and I’m getting quite famished.”** The dragon concluded his statement with a terrifying, sharp toothed grin.

“Condition: Neither of us is to lay claim to the princess until a victor is declared.”

“Excuse me?!” Zelda managed to exclaim weakly.

But Vaati ignored her, his red, angry gaze wholly focused on Onox.

The dragon’s stump of a tail twitched, giving the impression that if it had still been there, it would have been waving around like that of a conniving cat’s. A deep thrum came from the beast’s throat, contemplating the simple condition. **“Hmph; I’ll accept under the condition that we both swear upon our magic to a _fair_ duel, namely no sweeping the wind from beneath my wings.”**

“Tch, smart dragon. Very well.” Vaati said snidely. “Princess!”

Zelda snapped to attention, surprised that she was being brought into this. She’d found that her voice didn’t seem to matter to either dragon or mage whenever they had a confrontation. And still feeling a bit bitter about that, she replied with a frustrated, “What?!”

“The brute and I need to swear upon our magic. Normally, a third party isn’t needed for this but seeing as I don’t trust him and it’s safe to assume he doesn’t trust me-”

 **“I don’t.** ” Onox confirmed.

“- we need a third party to get us to swear in to assure in a more or less fair duel.”

The princess scowled. “… I suppose as long as it means I won’t get swooped up and stolen away again in the middle of a fiery death match, I can.” Swallowing the gut wrenching fear that she somehow managed to conceal during her snarky comment, she stepped forward and looked from dragon to mage, who were both staring at her, waiting. And then she found herself swallowing her pride knowing what words she was about to say. “The Sorcerer of Winds Vaati and Dragon Onox; do you both swear upon your magic not to lay a hand or claw or otherwise harm or force me into anything until this duel is concluded fairly and a victor decided?”

“I swear.”

**“I swear.”**

The dragon and mage then snapped their gazes back at each other. The duel had already begun; each was just waiting for the other to move first. Zelda inched backwards again, back towards the cave.

“Zelda,” Vaati said, his gaze still upon on Onox. “Stay right where you are. I’ll be done with the overgrown lizard soon enough.”

The princess shuddered at the words. They exuded the same amount of confidence and pride as… as when he said he would never let her go. Before she could register what thoughts were racing in her head, she blurted out, “I’ll never forgive you if you lose!”

“Never forgive me?” There was a slight hint of amusement in his voice, “How will I ever live with myself?”

Immediately after saying it, the mage launched upwards. Zelda barely had time to blink before seeing that the mage was no longer in the humanoid form she’d become accustomed to but the black Cyclops bat creature that she’d first seen him as. Eyes wide, she watched as the battle became beast against beast with raking at each other from both sides. While Vaati was still much, much smaller in comparison to the great dragon, the monstrous form was giving extra substance to the battle that magic alone could not. And she wasn’t sure if what she was watching was a spectacle for the ages or something out of a nightmare.

Flashes of fire, claws against claws, angry gusts of winds, magic she couldn’t identify flying all over the place while both creatures blurred back and forth in a deadly dance in the light of dusk.

But strangely, the floor was shaking… But both Vaati and Onox were in the sky and… dirt was flying around. She finally tore her gaze from the battle and looked down next to her to see the ground practically explode in a flurry of rock dust. Blinking absently, she began to make out a familiar shape… “Ledd?” She asked in awe.

“Huh? Whosaiddat?” A shake later and the dirt flew off of the Mogma. And sure enough, it was a scratched up and partially bald Ledd. “Zelly! Yo, you’re in one piece!” The Mogma said happily. “Last time I saw ya there was all this fire and junk – but look at you, you’re okay!”

“ _I’m_ okay?! I thought you had burned alive!” She said, her broad smile betraying the sound of her incredulous voice as she practically jumped the mogma and gave him a tight embrace.

But Ledd had barely noticed her hug when he’d caught sight of the sky, “Whooaa, what’s going on up there?!”

She looked back up to the sky and then frowned, reminded that there were two beats currently fighting over her. “The same thing that happened before,” she said grimly.

“Huh? But where’s that girly looking guy that had you trapped in the crystal?”

“Um, ah… he’s the giant black bat with the horns…” Zelda said awkwardly.

“R-really? Whoddathunk he’d be a thing like that…” The mogma said nervously. “B-but hey, Zel, whatteryou still doing here?! They’re not watching you or nothing, you can run away!”

“I suppose I can but…” she had begun… and then she hesitated. She had known that, but she hadn’t really thought about why she had stayed. Because of Vaati’s confident way of speaking? Was that it? And again she was reminded of the strange instances within the dodongo cave. Was it possible that she actually was… that she actually kind of liked him. Even if everything was _all_ his fault. _At least he’s trying to make up for it_ , her thoughts told her. And she didn’t try to shush those thoughts, though she had to admit they did make her feel quite uncomfortable. “I’m not going to run.” She said finally, though her voice was still shaky with uncertainty.

“Huh? But why? That guy’s totes crazy creepy! He has these little tiny evil bats that tear hair off!” Ledd cried out.

“I know!” Zelda said snappishly, her face reddening. “L-listen, I know it’s crazy but… I know what I’m doing, okay?”

The Mogma twiddled his claws, “If you say so… but this place stinks of more fiery close calls, I’m getting outta here so… uh, good luck, then, Zel.”

“Thanks, Ledd… but can you actually do me a favor?”

“A favor? Yeah, sure; name it, Zelly.”

“Can you find a give a message to someone for me, please?” She asked, her eyes darting nervously back and forth between the ongoing battle between beasts and her mogma acquaintance.

“Yeah, sure… Um, who am I looking for?”

“A friend of mine named Link; he’s been looking for me in Hyrule, I’m sure… And he’s probably very worried. Could you please tell him that I’m all right and still waiting for him at the Palace?” She said, a knot twisting tightly in her stomach as she said it.

“Hyrule, huh…? Yeah, I’ll get right on it, but Zel… I really hope ya know what you’re doin.” Ledd said. “Well, see ya around then!” And with that, he dug himself back into his hole and burrowed off.

“I hope I know what I’m doing too…” She confessed to herself and she turned her attention fully back to the battle in the sky.

No matter which way she looked at it, both the monstrous wind mage and the massive dragon seemed to be on a level playing field. While the wind mage was smaller and able to maneuver out of sweeping attacks, Onox still had massive power to any physical blows as well as his flames. Vaati had chanced swiping his own claws if the dragon made himself open, as well as using his wind magic and various other destructive magics that seemed to involve impressive displays of light. But the morbid fascination was replaced wholly with fear as a jet of flame missed Vaati and began to rain down upon her.

She quickly racked her brains for some sort of barrier spell and attempted it, but the magic sputtered in her hands and she found herself nearly fainting. She stumbled, realizing that she was more exhausted by this whole ordeal than she initially thought. She hugged herself, bracing herself for the worst… but then she noticed the flames just seemed to slide off of the air around her.

“ _Watch it you bumbling oaf of a dragon! I realize you want to eat her but you’re getting to gung-ho on the cooking!_ ” She heard the grating voice of demon Vaati snap at Onox.

As Onox irately replied, **“Then how about you be more careful where you flit around to, _bug_ ,”** Zelda thought that she had been trapped within another crystal… until she saw a somewhat transparent box-like structure around her. She extended a hand to it, seeing that her fingers passed through it. She wasn’t trapped like before. Vaati had kept the spell loose so that she’d be able to run if necessary.

 _But that’s for his own benefit! He doesn’t actually care, remember that Zelda!_ She told herself, despite the fact that the thought wasn’t sitting well with her… She didn’t want to think too hard about why.

“… _Overgrown gecko!”_

**“Mutated keese!”**

“ _Winged slug!”_

**“Irritating little he-witch!”**

Zelda turned her attention back to the sky at the interesting exchange. It was difficult now to really see the two, as dusk was almost all the way to night… but the glare of the dragon’s eyes as well as Vaati’s one crimson orb gave away their places. The erratic movements and the slashes and crashed in the air told her they were still fighting, but had somehow also begun a pathetic exchange of name-calling, probably brought upon after Vaati had chastised Onox for allowing flames to get near her.

Her eyes adjusted enough just in time so that with a massive flap of his wings and a booming roar, Onox cried out, “ **ENOUGH!”**

Both beasts hovered in midair, eyeing each other with deepest loathing.

**“It pains to admit that as beasts, our duel is not going anywhere.”**

“ _Tch, had we not agreed to fair terms I can assure you this would have already ended._ ” Demon Vaati hissed. Heck, he was sure he would have been able to win in a fair fight had he been well-rested… but the saying, “no rest for the wicked,” seemed to be all too relevant at this time.

 **“Then perhaps a conclusion can be made in a different way; you take your humanoid form and I shall take one of my own; that immediately takes away size difference…”** the dragon let out a ghastly chuckle, **“More or less anyways…”**

Vaati was silent, considering the dragon’s words. He had to be honest, he hadn’t expected the dragon to admit to having humanoid form. It wasn’t unusual for creatures of raw magic like dragons to have such forms; after all, humans and Hylians could be quite barbaric sometimes, attacking what they didn’t understand. To ensure survival, blending in was necessary. It was just standard evolution, really – one would have to change in order to survive. But proud creatures such as dragons tended to be stubborn about taking other forms unless absolutely necessary. Nonetheless, Vaati was not naturally a One Eyed Beast. In his standard form, he would be at more of an advantage… “ _Very well, Onox. We’ll conclude this man to man… in a manner of speaking._ ”

Zelda had simply watched the exchange with a measure of wariness and confusion. Onox as a human-like creature… She had a hard time imagining it. But more concerning was what this meant for her. How were the odds looking for her in this situation? She honestly didn’t know, and her stomach was knotting like crazy as her thoughts became progressively grimmer in her mind.

“Zelda?” She brought herself out of her reverie of dark thoughts at Vaati’s voice. He was standing before her, humanoid in appearance again and curiosity upon his handsome features. The princess was at a loss for words at the moment. Perhaps the finality of the whole situation was just hitting her now. Vaati and Onox… this was really the deciding battle for the two villains. And she was the prize. She was sure the knots in her stomach were about to pour out all over the floor any moment, and her hand shot to her mouth as she gagged.

“Zelda, I stand by what I said.”

The gag died down. “H-huh…?”

“No one shall take you from me. This dragon included.” He sounded almost put out, as if he’d read her mind and was insulted by the very fact she was considering he might possibly lose. If her face was green, she was sure it had turned pink then. He had that confidence in himself… that arrogant confidence that she, for some completely outrageous reasoning she couldn’t possibly even begin to understand, found attractive.

His annoyed voice again intruded upon her thoughts, “Are we absolutely clear on that, Zelda?”

She just stared for a moment, not sure what to say. Still unable to find words, she gave him a weak nod.

“Are you quite finished over there?”

Zelda nearly jumped at the sound of the unfamiliar voice. Well, to call it unfamiliar wasn’t entirely true. It was deep, rumbling… Something in it definitely spoke of what its owner truly was, though the reverberation through her off. It almost sounded like he was speaking from inside of a helmet… And it was so dark now, the moon being obscured by the mountain-side, she couldn’t really see anything past Vaati.

Witchlights glowing a pale indigo suddenly came into being, fluttering around the area. Zelda had no doubts that the wind mage had been the practitioner behind them.

“Heh. So that’s the form he chooses… Dragons do love their armor, I suppose.” Vaati had commented absently.

And she saw why. Standing quite a few feet away was a large form, bipedal and bulky, and with a very blocky silhouette. And as the witchlights flickered by it, the blocky shapes gleamed and shined. Metal. It was plate armor. The large figure was covered in menacing looking plate armor. And while she couldn’t readily identify the proper color of it, she was willing to bet that it was the same hues found on the large dragon that had been hovering in the sky just minutes before. And as if to make the whole ensemble more intimidating, in one of the plated hands of the figure was a ball and chain the likes of which she was sure an ordinary human being couldn’t handle.

“A-an _Iron Knuckle_?” She guffawed.

“No, but he’s probably a fan of them – either that or they’re a fan of him.” Again, Vaati had spoken carelessly, as if this wasn’t a completely terrifying situation.

“B-but how are you going to fight against _that_?! Armor like tha-”

It was the last thing she expected, Vaati kissing her. And, as seemed to be the fashion of the past twenty minutes, she had no idea what to do about it. She knew she definitely wanted to punch him, but she was frozen in place. For some reason, she found herself saying that she couldn’t hit him for this unless it was a bad reason. And she didn’t know the reasoning. It certainly wasn’t a romantic kiss, nor was it a chaste kiss…

When he backed away a moment later (though the princess had to confess it didn’t feel like just a moment), he said, “You’re far too chatty. I’ll only be a moment.”

She still stood dumbfounded and blushing even after he’d turned around to head towards Onox. It was still all processing in her head… And then her blush just turned into a tomato red of rage. _He just did that to shut me up!_ She stomped her foot down and grit her teeth. _How dare he? Kissing a lady just to keep her quiet; as if he couldn’t be any more infuriating!_ But she kept her desire to scream inside, deciding to let the anger boil and fester so that it could be all the worse to unleash after she became the prize to whoever won. Because regardless of winner, they were going to get a world class hissy fit, yes they were!

Onox merely chuckled at the scene, and wisps of smoke exited his sallet as he laughed.

“There are some things a dragon just cannot contain, it seems.” Vaati commented nonchalantly.

The dragon grinned beneath his sallet, but said nothing regarding the comment. Instead, he chose to get straight to the point since night had fallen and he was on a time limit, “Well, bug? We have chosen to fight man-to-man; are you choosing to come into this battle unarmed? I won’t have any complaints, regardless.”

“Unfortunately for you, I don’t have a death wish.” Was the mage’s reply. Truthfully, he didn’t have a weapon at the ready. He was a mage of winds after all, he didn’t usually need to carry external weapons because magic was a force of nature – it was all around. The good thing was, magic was also an excellent way to conjure up something like a weapon – not something to be used for the long run, but for a hopefully quick and dirty fight like this, it should work.

He summoned a sentry eye, which appeared with a little puff of smoke and bobbed happily at the sight of its master. Being bound to its master’s will, it also knew immediately what Vaati wanted and was all too happy to oblige. The little sentry smooshed and flattened itself in midair, almost looking like it was some sort of dough being handled by an invisible baker. Zelda found herself rather baffled by the sight of the sentry doing such a thing, especially considering it was stretching far more than she would have ever imagined such a thing to do… then again, she had never imagined such a little creature would be able to morph its shape in such a way at all. It stretched its length to about three feet before flattening itself out in midair, shaping itself to a basic blade, and then jutting out a guard at the hilt. The sentry opened up its single little red eye at the guard, looking up at its master for some sign of approval. Vaati smirked and took the sentry-sword from midair, giving it an experimental swing.

Contrary to popular belief, Vaati had won that sword fighting competition in the Picori Festival fair and square all those many years ago. He was a mage, but that didn’t mean he was incompetent with a blade – especially considering his meager origins. All Minish knew how to handle weapons – _all of them_. At such a small size, literally anything could kill you and one had to be prepared at all times, because sometimes magic just wasn’t enough. So while Vaati didn’t consider himself an extraordinary swordsman, he was good enough to beat Hylians simply because he had been forced to get quite creative in how to beat the many things that wanted to kill him as a Minish. So while he may have one all those years ago, he also knew that his win was considered quite “dirty.”

“Whenever you’re ready, dragon.” Vaati said confidently as he strode forward, holding his sentry-sword at the ready.

The dragon let out a short cackle before picking up the ball and chain and spinning it above his head effortlessly. Vaati remained in place, analyzing.

Their choice of weaponry made for an interesting set-up. Onox had chosen a ranged weapon of sorts, while Vaati had gone for a melee weapon – both very different styles of combat. Onox’s weapon was designed so that a person with a melee weapon would have a difficult time getting near. However, spinning that flail around over his head like that made him vulnerable. If Vaati could get close enough before Onox struck, or maybe even right after he struck… The mage hid his smile; close quarters combat like this required a poker face after all.

It wasn’t a moment later when Onox sent the spiked ball in Vaati’s direction; he side-stepped and then charged at the dragon’s bipedal form, the tiniest bit of wind magic pushing his steps forward. He didn’t strike immediately, instead merely looking at Onox’s armor to find any weaknesses that could be exploited. He didn’t get that much of a good look, because Onox managed to pull the chain back, maneuvering himself and the weapon so that the spiked end was coming right at Vaati. The mage glided backwards and landed with a small skid. No time to relax, the spiked ball was coming at him once again. It seemed Onox was much swifter than he let on in this armored form.

It seemed to be a game of cat and mouse then, and Zelda had no idea who would win. She wasn’t aware either the dragon or mage had any sort of experience wielding such weapons… But she had to imagine if she was in Onox’s place, she’d be very annoyed with how Vaati always managed to slide out of every fancy maneuver that was thrown at him. The same went for if she was in Vaati’s place: Onox’s persistence was probably beyond irritating. But in the end that’s what started this whole stupid situation: the two just plain didn’t like each other…

Still, she was stumped. Onox would strike, Vaati would slide out of the way, Onox would then retaliate with surprising speed… But Vaati wasn’t really doing anything aside from getting out of the way. Zelda bit her lip, watching the scene with ever growing anxiety, wondering where on earth this fight was going to go.

And then Vaati made his strike. Onox had thrown the ball and chain, Vaati rushed in, the dragon quickly dragged the ball around to swing to Vaati, the mage ducked and then brought his blade down right on the back of one of the dragon’s legs, where the armor was weak and the back of the calf just slightly exposed. Onox let out a roar of pain and staggered forwards, the ball and chain dealing him further damage by slamming into his side from his misstep as Vaati simply glided off to the side. The mage had a satisfied look on his face, though he was still on guard.

“Hamstring…?” The dragon growled. “What a nasty move, bug.”

“Did you expect any less?”

“Harumph… I suppose not.” With surprising quickness, he stood straight again and threw his ball and chain at the mage. The mage’s eyes widened in surprise as he tried to glide out of the way, but the ball and chain wrapped around his blade and yanked him back. Onox grinned viciously as he began to drag the chain towards him. Vaati scowled and muttered something unpleasant under his breath as he was dragged closer to the beat in the Knuckle armor, but quickly rectified the situation by tilting his sentry-blade downwards. As the chains slid downwards from the blade, Vaati glided backwards and regained his distance from his foe.

“You’re filled with nasty moves as well, if not mediocre.” Vaati said flatly. “Anyone with a brain knows to simply turn the blade down.”

A deep chuckle echoed from within Onox’s sallet, “I suppose I simply assumed you didn’t have a brain.”

Anger flashed in Vaati’s eyes; the mage was about to charge, but stopped himself. The dragon was baiting him… just like the first two times. _Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times… well, either way you’ll be dead._ He thought with a bitter smirk. The next time he moved, he would make it count. He would finish this battle. And he could tell from the way Onox righted himself, favoring his uninjured leg, that the dragon was of the same mind.

If he could get in quickly enough and land a blow right at center mass, it would be devastating to the dragon… But center mass was always the most heavily armored place of any suit of armor. _How much strength are you capable of…?_ The thought was directed towards his makeshift sentry sword. It was a simple construct – not a real blade. It had a damage limit – but how much damage could he do if he managed to put all of his strength, not that that was much either… but if he could put his magic into this… He gritted his teeth. The vow on their magic… A _fair_ duel. _I suppose I’ll just have to get him to break it first._

And he already knew how.

The witchlights that had been providing the light for the small battlefield in the night winked out abruptly, leaving everything in darkness.

“Pah! No fair, mage! In this form I cannot see in the darkness!” Onox barked angrily.

“But I haven’t broken any rules, Onox, considering I’m just as blind as you are at the moment.” Vaati answered smugly, making sure to keep moving quickly and quietly as to not be pinpointed by the dragon.

He heard the wary shuffling of an uncomfortable Onox – the dragon was definitely not used to fighting outside of his element. Vaati could only smirk at that thought, even though he hadn’t been lying. He was really just as blind as the dragon, but he actually knew what he was doing as he quietly stepped further and further back.

Zelda, in the meanwhile, strained to see in the darkness. She would have tried to summon a light herself, but knew that Vaati had dismissed his own lights for a reason… And she certainly didn’t want to compromise whatever plan he had in his head. She was still mad at him, yes, but she’d rather not get eaten by a dragon. Nonetheless, she was just as uncomfortable as Onox at that moment since she had no idea what was going on. So when she heard a whisper say, “Zelda…?”

She’d nearly screeched shrilly; but she recognized the voice as Vaati’s, and quietly hissed, “What are you doing?!”

“Good…” And with that, there was a skidding sound on the dirt. Zelda’s eyes widened with horror, her vision adjusting ever so slightly to see that Vaati had just slid the tip of his blade across the dirt _purposefully_. Before Zelda could say or scream anything, the ball and chain flew their way. Vaati side stepped and Zelda scrambled backwards, and with a devastating thud the spiked ball landed roughly inches away from Zelda. There were so many unpleasant things she wanted to say at that very moment, directed both at dragon and mage, but Vaati quietly hissed, “Quickly, touch it!”

She got it. She quickly laid her hand on the spiked ball, flinching a bit when her hand cut itself on one of the spikes.

Vaati’s witchlights flickered back into existence, showing off the triumphantly smug look on the mage’s face. “Why, Onox… it seems you’ve broken your swear.”

The bipedal dragon made no movement, his sallet’s visor clearly staring at Zelda, who was pointing out the cut on the palm of her hand. It wasn’t a moment later when the dragon staggered back and a low growl of pain could be heard. The growl turned into a howl as the dragon began to clutch at his helmet as he stumbled upon himself. Vaati wasted no time – gliding forward with the power of the wind at his back, he swung the blade upwards along center mass of the great dragon Knuckle. The extra force of the wind behind the blow cracked and dented the armor upwards and sent the sallet of the dragon’s humanoid form flying.

Another howl of pain followed by a massive crashing of metal could be heard. The mage looked down at his fallen foe, his expression the definition of satisfaction as he pointed the blade right at the humanoid dragon’s now bare neck. Onox, who looked a weird mish-mash of human and Lizalfol, simply stared at the mage with utmost hatred in his reptilian eyes. “You foul little bug – you took it _all_ away from me.”

“You honestly didn’t think our fair fight would really be fair, did you?” Prodding his sentry-sword’s point at the beast’s neck. “I wonder if it’s really worth it to kill you now, though. Having broken a swear on your magic, you’re stuck like this now, aren’t you? In fact, I’d say you’re quite harmless – disposing of you would be all too easy.”

The dragon hissed at him, trying summon a gout of flame from his throat but failing. Onox let his head fall back on the ground, despair upon his visage.

Vaati’s smirk grew into a malicious grin. “I’ll let you live, so you can enjoy your loss of power… But I wouldn’t advise making the mistake of coming near me again. I’ll kill you without hesitation… In fact, I would advise you to stay away from Hyrule completely – the whole of it is my territory, and I would hate to have to take the garbage out again – I dislike getting my hands dirty.”

And with that, the mage stepped away from the fallen Knuckle-dragon and threw his sword in the air. The sword returned to its sentry form, the sentry itself looking very dizzy and quite battered. “Not bad.” He commented to the little creature, dismissing it.

“Vaati?” Zelda called quietly, not having moved from her place by the ball and chain.

The mage looked to the girl, his smirk returning as he made his way to the girl.

“Is he…?” Zelda asked, glancing at Onox, who had not even attempted to move.

“No; but he shan’t be coming after either of us – I assure you.” He said to her.

The princess sighed in relief, “Good…” She then looked to Vaati, her face contented, happy… grateful even. Then it quickly turned to a flash of anger as she slapped him.

Not having expected that, Vaati stepped back, raising a hand to the stinging sensation on his cheek. “You ungrateful little _wench_ ,” he snarled.

“That’s what you get for kissing me to shut me up!” She shouted.

“What?” He snapped, confused, until he remembered that he had, in fact, done so. She was upset about _that_? He took a deep breath, trying with all his might to ignore the rage searing through him. “You… are the most irritating creature…” He growled… but he miraculously did manage to calm himself, after remembering what an idiot she’d been under the Jinx. “I suppose I wouldn’t have it differently, though.”

But Zelda said nothing; she simply huffed and crossed her arms, a blush coming upon her fair cheeks as she avoided his gaze. Her blush grew even more, however, when the mage went ahead and picked her up bridal style. “What on earth are you-”

“Would you prefer me to carry you like this or in claws?” He snapped, “Because we are certainly _not_ walking back to Hyrule.”

She pursed her lips and then let out an angry sigh. “Like this is… fine, I suppose…”

“Good; let’s just hope your little friend and his clones don’t arrive before we do.” He said irritably.

And she supposed he was right about that…


	8. Dénouement

The flight back had been wordless and by the time the mage and the princess had returned to the Palace of Winds, the sun was rising. Even when they’d landed, no conversation passed between them. Vaati simply lead the way, stopping at a door and giving Zelda a stare that said, “ _Go in and don’t complain_ ,” before he stalked off to wherever it was he was going. The princess stared at the door for a moment before walking in and finding an airy, open bedroom befitting of the Palace of Winds. She closed the door behind her and then fell face first onto the bed. Sleep came instantaneously.

When she woke up, the sun was high in the sky. Her sense of time was skewed enough so she wasn’t sure if it was the same day or not. Sitting up straight, Zelda grimaced as she caught the state of herself. She’d never felt so disgusting in her life – and she was rather certain she’d never been more disgusting in her life either. As soon as she thought that, one of Vaati’s little sentry eyes flew in through the large window and squeaked at her. She blinked at it, confused, not sure at all what it was trying to tell her. But as it pulled at a strand of her hair, she scowled at it and decided to follow it.

It led her out of the room and down more of the open air halls that comprised the palace until stopping another door. It squeaked and fluttered around the door, as if urging her to go in. She gave it a suspicious stare before entering and seeing it was a bathing space. She brightened considerably at the sight, glad that she’d be able to get off the guck and grime that was no doubt caked on her. Then again, she imagined that if Link were to come to the palace to see Zelda mud caked and bloody, it’d be kind of hard to conceal the fact that something crazy happened (well, crazier then being kidnapped by a demonic wind mage) and Vaati did have an image to maintain. She snorted, as she could easily see the appalled expression his face if word got out that a dragon had kidnapped the thing he’d kidnapped first.

Bathing was surprisingly a bit painful, given all the cuts and bruises she gained during that “adventure.” But she was more than happy when she could actually see her skin’s natural complexion and run her fingers through un-matted hair. As she got out of the bathing pool, she noticed that on a stand near one of the sinks was some cloth – new clothes, probably. She doubted the dress she’d worn the past few days was repairable.

She unfolded the dress, a floor length gown of an older fashion than she was used to with long, billowing sleeves. While Zelda wasn’t sure why Vaati had such a thing in the palace (she hated the thought that there might be some envy bustling up inside of her) she had to admit the longer sleeves would be excellent for covering up the cuts and bruises on her arms. The dress fitted, and she had to admit… being clean, wearing clean clothes… she was never going to take such luxuries for granted ever again.

She then exited the bathing room and found that the little sentry was still floating around, apparently having waited for her. With another squeak, it began to flit off again. Zelda frowned, not sure if she wanted to follow the little creature… But she did.

As she followed the creature, she let her eyes wander – this time for purely aesthetic purposes. Strangely, she found she had no desire to escape (she didn’t want to think too hard about why), allowing her to take in the beauty of the Palace. Everything about it seemed to be built open and airy, with very few completely sealed off structures. She imagined the fully closed in places were the ones that held things that weren’t safe to keep open to the elements. And she received her answer as the little sentry eyes bobbed in front of a pair of double doors leading to a sealed off room.

Giving the little creature another suspicious glare, she opened one of the doors and walked inside to see one of the largest libraries she’d ever seen. She gaped at the sight of it, taking in the fact that there must have been centuries worth of ancient knowledge from the deceased Wind Tribe in this place. But the little sentry gave her no time to look around as it pulled lightly at her hair again, urging her to follow it. She hesitantly did so, and finally saw where the sentry was leading her.

On one of the chairs, softly snoring, was Vaati. He had to have been dead to the world asleep seeing as there was no reaction from him as she neared. Nonetheless, she did take note that he cleaned up nicely, as he looked as pristine as when he’d first kidnapped her. _That reputation needs to be maintained_ , she thought with huff. Still, she couldn’t help but look at the mage and think… despite the whole ordeal of the past few days being all his fault… he made up for it. She was back here, safe and sound and very much not in a dragon’s digestive system. At the same time, she still wasn’t too crazy about being kidnapped or marrying said kidnapper… The scary part was, though, the last prospect didn’t bother her as much as it used to.

She pursed her lips in thought. Sure, Vaati looked all cute and innocent sleeping right now, but he wasn’t. He was a power obsessed show-off with a temper problem. In fact, he was a huge brat. If he didn’t get what he wanted, he threw very destructive tantrums and didn’t think. Not to mention the fact that he was, you know… a demon of sorts. And while she knew that he was happy flaunting his power and not taking over Hyrule, she was fairly certain that his obsession with him taking her as a wife had very little to do with actual affection too. Was it even possible for him to feel anything like true affection?

 _Argh! Why am I even thinking about this?! It’s like I’m actually considering-_ She didn’t dare let the thought finish. She scowled, then marched up to the sleeping mage and smacked him.

Vaati awoke with a start, seemingly ready to magically dispose of whoever had just assaulted him. While he didn’t drop his scowl when he saw it was Zelda, he made no move to follow through with any malicious magic he had in mind.

“We need to talk.” She said irritably.

“So talk.” He replied just as irritably.

“I can’t marry you.”

“If you don’t you can be sure that Hyrule won’t be as prosperous as it is now.”

“See? That’s why I can’t marry you – this is _not_ how healthy relationships work!”

He forked an eyebrow as he smirked. “It almost sounds like you want a relationship.”

“And maybe I do!” She snapped, ignoring her reddening face. “Maybe I’ve come to the conclusion that you’re not as horrible as I initially thought and I might consider – _might_ – that having some sort of relationship with you isn’t so hideous a prospect!”

While Vaati’s expression seemed relatively unchanged, his thought process couldn’t be guessed by Zelda. He simply stayed in that unreadable state for a few moments before finally saying, “Won’t your beau in green have an issue with that?”

“He’s _not_ my beau!” The princess practically shouted. “Aside from being my best friend, he’s my _cousin_! That would be _gross_! Of course, that also means I really don’t want you _killing_ him either!”

The mage was quiet again, but his expression became serious as he considered this new information. “I don’t much like the idea of giving you a choice in this matter.” He finally conceded.

Oh how she wanted to scream. “I’m already saying I’ll give you a _chance_ , what is so bad about that?!”

“There’s the possibility that if I even make the slightest error you may sic your dear cousin on me.”

Exasperated, the princess cried, “Oh I _won’t_! And aren’t you always saying how you can beat him to a pulp in a second, how there’s nothing to fear from him?”

But Vaati still had that thoughtful look. “Fair point. What if you’re lying?”

Her mouth hung open for a moment in shock. “What? After everything we have been through the past few days… You’d think I’d lie after all of that – after I gave you the okay for us to be on a _first name basis_? After I entrusted my _life_ to you, you think I would lie to you about something as serious as _this_?” The mage’s expression never changed, but his eyes said something along the lines of “duh.” “Not everyone thinks like you! You see, that’s another part of why getting married probably won’t work now – it’s a two way street! I… I… I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I _trust_ you! You asked me to believe in you and I did… And now you have to learn to trust me!”

Vaati seemed to have the look of someone who had a bad smell put directly underneath their nose. And when she thought about it, the whole idea of trust was probably something foreign to him. All he believed in was power – trust was just something that an enemy could exploit. It was a weakness.

She took a deep breath and calmed herself down a bit before saying, “Listen, Vaati… that’s… that’s all I’m asking. I’m asking you to trust me. When you learn to do that… then maybe… you won’t have to force me into anything and you won’t have to kill anyone to do it either.”

Again there was silence as he considered this. The cogs in his head turned as he weighed the pros and cons of this. Truthfully, he would just rather speed up the whole process and marry her, regardless of her objections. Yet at the same time, to have the princess willingly be his… it would take longer, but there was the extra satisfaction of knowing that she _wanted_ his company. There was just one thing he needed to get across to the girl. “… As I’m sure you are aware, I’m very possessive. If I fail this little test of yours, it simply means we shall be repeating the actions of when I’d first taken you from the castle.” He told her matter-of-factly.

The fact that he was even considering it, however, was enough to have Zelda inwardly grinning. “I know; but… but I’d like to think you won’t fail.”

He was confused, not understanding why this girl would put herself in an inescapable situation… But he shrugged, and finally said, “Very well then. Either way you’re mine.”

Zelda gave him a small scowl that didn’t quite hide a smile, “I’m not a possession, I’ll have you know.” _Oh goddesses what did I just start?_

He smirked as if he’d read those thoughts, but did not answer.

With a poof, another little sentry eye appeared besides Vaati, squeaking something quickly to its master. Vaati frowned at the squeaks, but seemed unconcerned and more curious than anything. It made Zelda wonder what was going on, but the little sentry kept squeaking away for what seemed like forever before stopping, leaving the mage only saying, “Interesting…”

“What?” She asked.

“It seems your cousin, his clones, and the two cronies they have following them found themselves in an interesting situation at Lake Hylia.”

“Lake Hylia?” Zelda asked, paling a bit. “That’s where my father is right now…”

“Yes; apparently, the guards were distracting the king while your cousin went and attempted to free the Great Fairy residing in the Lake; the plan was ruined by some sort of mole man or something, which caught your father’s attention. Needless to say, there was great confusion as to why there were four of your cousin wandering about, as well as the Helmaroc King – rebellious sod, that bird – causing your father some worry. Of course the whole situation just became worse when the giant skullfish I had guarding the Great Fairy’s cavern acted up and… Well, simply put it was utter and complete chaos – probably a battle worth mentioning in history books if any particular writer got off of their lazy behind to pen it. The point is, your infuriating cousin and cohorts won and they’re all happily making their way here, with the exception of those guards who you’re father insisted on keeping around for ‘added protection.’” He explained nonchalantly.

The princess’s expression hardened, “Don’t kill them.”

“I never said I would; it should be noted, however, that I would very much like to.” He said indifferently as he stood from his chair and offered her a polite hand and smile. “Shall we greet them, dear?”

Her face reddened, but she said nothing and took his hand. After all, she’d been the one to propose a relationship, him calling her ‘dear’ was perfectly justifiable since they were… well, she he was technically courting her… _What am I doing?_ She thought hopelessly, still not quite believing that she’d set her self up in this situation. And again, Vaati only smirked at her as if he’d read her thoughts.

Vaati had led her back to the courtyard that he’d landed them on the first time they had arrived at the Palace, just in time to see the four Links rushing forwards from out of a hall. The green tuniced one was the first spot her. “Zelda!” He cried out rushing towards her but then suddenly pausing and getting into a defensive stance upon seeing the man holding Zelda’s hand. The mage put on his best “better-than-thou” face and pulled Zelda closer to himself, eyeing the Links, who were now all in formation and prepared to attack, with no hidden amount of distaste.

“Whoever you are, let go of Zelda.” The green Link said dangerously.

“Wait, Link,” Zelda began, letting go of Vaati and stepping forward a little bit, an action the mage seemed to disapprove of but did nothing to stop. “Link, it’s… it’s all right.”

“Who _is_ that guy? How do we know it’s really all right?” The Link in blue asked angrily.

Zelda pursed her lips, but didn’t think too long. If she didn’t answer quickly, Vaati would – and bad things would happen if Vaati answered. “This is Vaati-” All four Links’s eyes widened and started forward, but Zelda held out her hands quickly, “ _No!_ ”

“What are you doing, Zelda? Why are you defending him?!” The Link in green asked incredulously, a chorus of agreement coming from the other three Links.

“Just shut up and listen would you?!” She snapped, her cousin and his clones reluctantly doing so. “A lot happened the past few days and… And, well, I’ve agreed to-”

The purple Link was the first to ask in pure horror, “You didn’t agree to _marry_ him, did you?!”

“Of course not!”

“Actually, she essentially did.” Vaati put in carelessly.

“Oh, shut up, you!” Zelda hissed over her shoulder at him before turning back to the Links and saying, “I’ve agreed to allow him to court me.”

“But _why_?!” The Red Link asked.

Zelda really wasn’t sure what to say. She was fairly certain Vaati would stop his I don’t care either way act” if she mentioned anything about Onox and promptly go on and kill her cousin and his clones. She didn’t have to answer, though, as Vaati went and said in a drawl, “You weren’t the only one playing hero over the past few days.”

“What? What’s he mean by that?” One of the Links asked – she didn’t catch which since she was looking at Vaati with eyes as wide as saucers. Granted, that was probably the most information he would give regarding the subject, but she still hadn’t expected it.

But Zelda looked back to Link and his clones and said with a slight stutter, “Ah, it-it doesn’t matter! Listen, the point is… you all don’t need to kill each other.”

“Though I’d very much like to.” Vaati snarled.

“ _Behave_!”

All of the Links save the one were still in battle position. The Red one pursed his lips and shyly stepped forward to Zelda. “Ummm… Zelda… Are you… Are you absolutely sure this is all right? I mean… is he really going to let you go?”

“Oh I’ll never let her go,” Vaati said as he walked forward and draped an arm over Zelda’s shoulder. He glanced down at her, giving her a knowing smile that caused her to blush slightly, “She already knows that…” Then he looked back to the Links, his expression going back to the bored one he’d been putting on in front of them, “But I am willing to let her out of my sight occasionally.”

This time, the Blue Link stepped forward, sword pointing accusingly at the mage and looking beyond angry. “I don’t like this; I don’t believe a goddess-damned word that comes out of that creep’s mouth!”

Vaati’s casually slung arm suddenly became possessive on Zelda, clutching her tightly besides him. But the princess put her hand over his, getting his attention. Zelda was giving him a serious look, the kind that read, _This is my first test for you._ Trust _me._ And she could tell that, despite the nonchalant mask, there was some internal struggle in the mage. Eventually, with some measure of disapproval, his grip lessened. Zelda stepped away, though she still faced the mage and held his hand lightly. “Next time you want to see me, please don’t break the windows.” She said.

The mage’s lips twitched upwards slightly. “I’ll try to remember that.”

And with that, she stepped away from the mage, her hand slipping from his grasp, and she walked right up to the Blue Link. However, while her expression towards Vaati had been warm, she looked up at the blue garbed Link with displeasure. “There. Are you happy?”

“No.” Said the Blue Link flatly.

“Oh shut up, Blue.” The Green Link said, shoving his counterpart out of the way. He gave Vaati a wary look but focused his attentions on Zelda. “So… that’s it?”

“For right now.” Zelda said simply. “Now, let’s go home. I’m sure you’re tired of seeing more than one of you walking around.”

“You have no idea…”

* * *

 

Link was all too happy to have the Four Sword back in the Shrine with the comfort of knowing that he was the only Link around. At the same time, it was so strange. Only a few days and he’d already been so used to seeing the other three versions of himself that sometimes he’d speak aloud, expecting an answer only to receive none. The only one that didn’t look at him like he was insane had to have been Zelda, who he did worry about. The day after she had returned to Hyrule Castle and was in her normal dress, he noticed that she seemed to be bruised just about everywhere, not to mention her steps were so light he’d have thought she might have been walking on hot coals. At first he’d thought Vaati had harmed her, but she assured him otherwise; though never clarified what exactly happened, only offering an enigmatic smile.

Oddly enough, however, he’d found that he had developed a rather healthy fascination with Great Fairies, though he decided it was best to keep it secret lest that guardsman Poe had found out.

Speaking of, it ended up Poe had quit his job as a Royal Guardsman and instead devoted himself wholly to the Great Fairies and their protection. His older brother, Gibdo, however, happily returned to his post. In fact, Gibdo was even on guard at the Four Sword Shrine again, guarding more vigilantly than he’d ever done in his life. He claimed that the mage’s release was an “eye opening” experience and that there was heroic work to be done in even the simplest of tasks.

The King of Hyrule ended his vacation early, claiming that having the Helmaroc King so nearby was unsettling, even if the bird didn’t seem to be doing any harm. It was then that Zelda had to come to her father with the awkward news. Granted, the King had already put most of it together. After all, one couldn’t hide the giant, broken window in the hall and the many guards who’d been injured during Vaati’s first initial attack. Still, she was fairly surprised at how well he’d taken the news of Vaati having been released from the Four Sword.

“Oh, I’m not taking it well.” The king had said calmly, almost cheerily. “But if I don’t maintain calm in front of the kingdom then what kind of monarch would I be? Truthfully, I’m blinded with rage right now.”

And that was where Zelda had clammed up. It seemed her father was using all of his willpower not to flip tables. But again, her father surprised her.

“And by the by, I don’t at all approve of you and the mage.”

“Huh?” She gaped, eyes wide.

The king kept his cheery smile and said, “Oh yes, I know. The real reason I cam back from vacation early was because the mage came and told me the whole story himself. He made me promise on pain of death that I couldn’t tell a soul except for you. I can’t say I approve of a man who let my daughter get kidnapped by a _dragon_ but there’s little I can do about it; especially if you really want to spend any time with that mage.”

She was taken aback, feeling a strange mixture of guilt and - dare she say it - happiness. Of course, that only made Zelda feel all the stranger about this whole situation. She was still having a hard time believing that she had arranged a civil relationship with Vaati, an evil demon that terrorized Hyrule… _Though I suppose he’s not really evil so much as he is amoral…_ She thought, not sure if that was better or worse.

And on one particular day she had found herself conflicted about it all over again. It had been a week since she’d returned to the castle, yet there had been no signs of Vaati. She’d gone to the garden to think, her face twisted up in puzzlement. A part of had her thinking, _Maybe it’s for the best if he doesn’t show up_ while another part of her was huffing, _Well I hope he’s not thinking I’m going to go to see him! As the man it’s his responsibility to come to me._ It was frustrating to have such a back and forth in her mind.

“Having second thoughts?”

Her gaze followed the voice to the roof, and sure enough, the mage was standing on the edge of the roof, a wry smile upon his handsome features. She scowled, “You and your high places.”

He chuckled as he glided over to her carelessly, “If you really are having second thoughts, I don’t mind. It just means I’ll have to steal you again.”

She gave him a flat look, again wondering when her common sense would get the better of her. It didn’t. “You kept me waiting.” The princess replied stiffly.

“You told me not to break any windows.” He said mockingly.

She halfheartedly slapped his arm. “You made me wait on purpose!”

“I wanted to make sure you were true to your word.” He said seriously.

Of course, she thought as rolled her eyes. “As you can see, I am true to it. If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have brought up my proposition in the first place,” she began angrily, now pointing an accusing finger at him, “You’re too paranoid, you know that? I mean, I don’t expect you to learn how to trust overnight but st-”

Vaati kissed her.

It really should have been déjà vu moment, Zelda had told herself. When he backed away, he had a very satisfied look on his face, while Zelda flushed angrily. “You’re still too chatty for your own good, dear Zelda.”

“You’re incorrigible.” She muttered angrily.

He gave her a smug smile, “Get used to it.”

“Would you just shut up and give me a proper kiss?” She snapped with a furious blush.

With a satisfied smirk, he happily obliged.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Congratulations! You've reached the end of Reversal! I hope you enjoyed it!   
> There is actually a sort of bonus chapter, but I'm debating whether or not to post it here as a separate side story or leave it on FFN as an FFN exclusive. I'll figure that out later! Whatever the case, if you enjoyed this story, please leave a comment or a kudo! ovob


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